


A hole in the soul

by dustbunnyprophet



Series: Souls [3]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Drug Addiction, Drug Withdrawal, Dwalin has a dog, Dwalin is a cop, Frerin is a mess, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Lots of it, M/M, Smoking, self-destructive behaviour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-12 09:33:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4474253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustbunnyprophet/pseuds/dustbunnyprophet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frerin had died with a scream on his lips, cut down too soon, much too soon. He had never been a warrior.</p>
<p>Dwalin had seen them all die, witnessed the turning of the ages. Old and weary he had wanted nothing but to lie down and join his forefathers, his long-missed kin.</p>
<p>But Dwalin was seldom given what he wanted and Frerin never left that battlefield, carrying the fray within his mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. My very first gun

**Author's Note:**

> A companion piece to [Lonely souls](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3863302/chapters/8631286) set several years before.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the strangest places.

The early Spring morning was cold, the frigid air seeping through the thick fabric of the uniform and Dwalin rubbed his hands together to get some life back into them. He idly watched his own breath condensate, white against the dull greyness of the London morning. He was waiting with the other lads for Bateman to give them the signal to go in and they all stood silent, ready to leap into action.

It was a standard procedure dawn raid on a squat and the police van was readily waiting for the usual bunch of junkies they were likely to bring down with them to the police station. Thompson yawned beside him, his wrinkling face twisting in a grimace between tiredness and impatience. Dwalin bent his head sideways, trying to get the crick out of his neck, the result of having spent the night on his old armchair instead of lying in his bed. He had fallen asleep watching some reruns on the telly and Barkith had snuggled on his feet, every now and then moving her tail in sleep. When he had awoken it had been already time to brew himself some black coffee and after briefly walking his dog in the eerily silent street below, Dwalin had had to get to the station. He resisted the urge to yawn too and he glared instead at the peeling paint of the door they were waiting to force open.

He idly wondered if he was going to see any familiar faces today. In the two years since he had been transferred from Edinburgh he had cuffed his fair share of people in London - petty offenders mostly, who had been arrested for possession, although every now and then he had got the chance to arrest drug dealers - and since most junkies tended to persist in their ways, Dwalin had cuffed some of them several times over.

A gust of wind sent a wave of unwelcome chills through him and he deepened his glare while he crossed his arms over his chest to keep some body heat. Just then, Bateman gestured them to move and the officers fell into position immediately while Price rammed the door open with a couple of well-aimed hits.

And then the usual organised chaos erupted.

There were shouts and the frantic sound of running steps while the team Dwalin was on strode quickly up the stairs, their boots thudding loudly on the wooden treads. Once they reached the dimly lit landing the officers fanned out and began kicking the doors open. Dwalin, Thompson and MacKenzie entered a room just as a very thin wild-eyed woman opened the sash window, trying to get out.

Dwalin leaped forward, grabbing her arm and pulling her off the windowsill. She began shrieking, loudly cursing them all with an array of colourful terms when MacKenzie searched her. She found several small nylon wraps of what looked like heroin on the woman and she cuffed her. Thompson gave MacKenzie a nod before she pulled the woman, kicking and screaming about police brutality, out of the room and towards the van which had been parked under the building.

Dwalin proceeded along with Thompson through the dingy hallway and the greying ginger-haired officer barged into the next room, leading the way. It could have been a kitchen, Dwalin thought, his eyes taking in the filth-encrusted sink and the equally grimy remnants of cupboards. Several lines of rope had been pulled through the length of the small room and some stained clothes were hanging off them.

Dwalin pushed the musty-smelling fabric away, bowing to pass under the ropes and following Thompson to the far corner of the room where a mattress had been laid on the linoleum which covered the floor. Atop the mattress lay the unmoving form of a man, curled on his side facing the wall and covered with a threadbare blanket. Dwalin could only see a mop of blond hair sticking in all directions and a bony shoulder.

He wondered for a second if the man was still alive - it wouldn't be the first OD'd addict he had stumbled upon. Thompson poked the man tentatively with his boot and the blond head groaned, slowly turning towards them while he peeled his eyelids open.

And Dwalin's breath suddenly jerked to a halt inside his chest.

_Impossible._

He felt his eyes instinctively widen as he tried to make sense of the sight before him. Impossible. It was impossible. He shook his head but _he_ was still there.

Sharp-angled nose and halfway open blue eyes with dark circles underneath, which were stark in contrast with the sickly paleness of the gaunt cheeks. Blond stubble covered them, framing a thin-lipped mouth which looked about to protest. Impossible. No, it was impossible.

But when words tumbled out of the man's mouth it was _that_ voice - only slightly higher in pitch than Thorin's had been. The voice which had been burned in Dwalin's mind a long lifetime ago, along with the face which was eyeing them, obviously as high as it came.

Dwalin stood there, frozen to the spot. It was impossible, utterly impossible and yet he was there, gazing at a man who couldn't, truly _couldn't_ be anyone but Frerin. He shook his head again in a bewilderment that ran deep, shaking all which he had thought and believed since he had been reborn in this unexpected human life - in this strange, queer world that didn't function the way Dwalin had been accustomed to. He kept shaking his head to himself, but his eyes barely moved from the sight on front of him.

He observed with a strange detachment Thompson go through the standard procedure. The handcuffs clicked closed and Dwalin still stood there, eyebrows furrowed in a deep frown while he watched the older officer pull the tall thin man - _Frerin -_ towards the door.

"Murray!" Thompson barked when he passed him.

"Get a move." he ordered and Dwalin swallowed down the shock which had taken hold of him and he nodded stiffly, forcing his feet to move with a glare for himself.

He followed Thompson and the handcuffed hunched figure of Frerin - _Frerin_ , how... but how..? _He didn't understand._ \- who was being taken downstairs.

The rest of the raid had passed like a cloud of smoke through Dwalin's mind, his body going through the motions on autopilot while his thoughts still sped, trying to bring some semblance of sense. Was he imagining things? Seeing ghosts from the past? It would be the easiest explanation, he mused while he nursed a scorchingly hot cup of coffee in the police station - to believe it was just wishful thinking from his part.

But no, Dwalin grimaced. He had no doubt about what his eyes had seen. No, that man - Charles Collins - _was_ Frerin. Dwalin could know his face anywhere, even if it had been a very long lifetime since the last time he had gazed at him - and his face had been white under the trail of blood, blue eyes widened in silent horror. Dead eyes.

He downed the coffee and it burned a trail down his throat. He ached for something stronger than coffee, like the scotch he had in his kitchen cupboard. Or any drink really, as long as it was strong enough to smash his chain of thoughts for a moment and let the memories dwell in peace, like those Dwalin had lost.

He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the familiar weight he had been carrying for what seemed like forever.

His whole existence, since his first birth, had been shrouded in grief and Dwalin carried it silently on his shoulders. Everyone died and he kept living. That's how it went, that's how it had always been. Everyone had died while Dwalin had just grown older, outliving grief and solitude.

And when he had at last felt life abandon him it had only been to throw him back to a new life. Another life where people kept dying and Dwalin lived on.

But Frerin did not rest in peace either, did he? He was there, back, the same way Dwalin was. In the over two and a half decades of this unwanted second life he had never imagined there could be someone else who shared his plight, but Frerin was back too and it was undeniable.

Frerin. He swallowed, shaking his head. He _was_ back, but to what? The erstwhile prince was a shell of his former self. He had looked at Dwalin without seeing, pale as a wraith with his filthy hair sticking in every direction and the reek of sickness about him. Dwalin arrested his sort, over and over until the day he didn't because they got found OD'd somewhere or simply disappeared.

Frerin was back, yes, but he was a dead man walking.

  
  


The rain was drizzling when he stepped out of the station, the glass door closing behind him. He pulled the hood of his shirt over his head to ward off the chilly droplets. His head was pounding viciously and he felt extremely twitchy.

The cops had detained him for the usual amount of time and he had been blessedly high when they had arrested him, but he had already crossed that limbo of bearable lucidity - of _sobriety_ \- and his body physically protested as withdrawal began to kick in, followed hand in hand - like a pair of giggling schoolgirls only their eyes were _wrong_ \- by his mind and he wanted to rip his thoughts out of his skull, burn them in acid and pour, pour the corrosion until nothing but white, snow white bone remained. And he would be free.

His thoughts were a noose tightening around his Adam's apple as it bobbed when he swallowed the dryness of his mouth. He _needed_ a fix. And soon.

He walked down the street and the wet fabric of his clothes stuck to his skin, hindering his movements and he felt like he was wading through something thick - like clotted blood - but perhaps it was just his mind, that horrible cornucopia of foulness and rotten things, which plagued his lucidity.

No. He needed to get a fix, or anything really, just as long as it took the edge off his thoughts, as it smothered the voices that echoed in his ears. He needed to hear the music, the soft plucking of strings, not the screams, the shouts, the biting scratching piercing of _his_ words - his father's, no, not his _father_ , he was no longer his son. Words which dug under his feet until there was nowhere to stand - the same way other words had been shoved deeply in his guts. But that voice was different, more distant as the aeons had wedged themselves between then and now, and it was not one but many, and yet they all spoke the same - the same his father did - and he wanted to rip his ears out, deafen himself to their sound. But they were inside his mind, echoed inside his flesh. And he needed a fix, needed to silence them. He needed _peace_.

He rummaged through his pockets and found his package of cigarettes. Fumbling with the lighter he managed to light one and he inhaled the smoke greedily while he sheltered from the rain under a balcony. The cigarette was struggling to burn, half damp as it was, but it gave him a small measure of calm while he tried to make his thoughts useful.

He needed to get a fix somewhere. Liz had been arrested and he needed to figure out where to find one of the other usual pushers. He cursed the cops under his breath, not even angry - anger had been flushed out of him by disgust, a disgust which could very well be his own, or was it _theirs_?

Things had been so good lately - too good. Sharing the same place with one of his pushers and only having to leave the squat to get some cash. It had been too good to last. He took a drag of his cigarette.

He needed to find somewhere to stay too. Somewhere dry. The rain began falling in earnest and it splashed on the tarmac, soaking his trainers while he tried to weigh his options in spite of the nearly overwhelming physical need to get a fix. He finished smoking while he turned his unhelpful thoughts.

"Frerin!" a deep voice bellowed through the pitter-patter of the rain and he turned his head sharply.

_What... how..._ He frowned, blinking away the pressure of his thoughts. A tall man was standing on the other side of the street, the rain falling on his shaven head and soaking through his brown beard and heavy brows. He... he looked  _familiar._

"Frerin." the man said again, crossing the street with a purposeful stride and he realised it hadn't been a voice inside his head. The _man_ had called him Frerin. How could he possibly _know_ that name?

The pounding headache grew worse as he tried to make some sense. And the man was coming _closer_. His dark jacket was as soaked as his beard and his face was wearing the strangest expression. He gazed in the man's direction and shook his head, his eyebrows knitting. His mind, that wretched thing which made him see phantoms, faces lost in the grinding of time and death. No. He shook his head. _No_.

"Frerin?" there was a tinge of concern in that deep, rasping voice and Frerin - no, he _wasn't_ Frerin, Frerin was dead and Charlie was dead to the world, he was _nobody_ \- and _he_ averted his eyes, his head still shaking, just like his hands which clenched and unclenched on his sides. _He needed a fix. Now._

"Go away." he croaked "I know you're not real. You're not really here, no one ever is. Just leave me alone, will you."

His own voice sounded tired to him and he made to move but his body weighted too much and his head was a thousand nails being hammered into his skull.

"I'll leave you alone if you want." the man said in a rough northern accent and the more he heard that voice, the more he wanted to rip his own brain out of his skull. It was _cruel_ , utterly cruel for his mind to torture him so.

The man extended a muscular arm, grabbing his shoulder and he - Frerin, Charlie, _nobody_ \- looked up into the man's stormy sharp blue eyes, his own wide in a bemusement which pounded in rhythm with his headache.

"I'm really here, though." that voice, _his_ voice finished and its tone was no-nonsense.

"It... it can't be." he rasped, but the man was levelling him a steely look which was familiar, which was _his -_ he had always worn that expression, balanced between a stare and a glare with his heavy brows slightly furrowed, he had worn it even when he had been just a dwarfling with a few wisps of beard on his cheeks and those two decades of difference had made Frerin feel old and wise, until _he_ had grown even taller than him, a scowling mountain of a dwarf.

"Dwalin." he said and those steely eyes relaxed a notch, the grip on his shoulder growing less bruising before he removed his hand altogether.

The rain was pouring viciously over both of them and Dwalin watched the man who had once been his kin, his Prince. Frerin was shivering but didn't seem to realise it, his eyes haunted and his mouth twisted in a grimace. His hands were twitching on his sides and Dwalin had no idea what he was doing. It had been a spur of the moment decision. Once his shift had been over he has gone to see Frerin only to be told they had already released him. MacKenzie had eyed him strangely, but he had simply stridden off and out of the station, looking for him.

And now he had found him and it _was_ truly Frerin, if any doubt had been left within him, but he was something broken, more broken now that he was lucid than he had seemed that morning.

Frerin was fumbling with a cigarette, the orange of the lighter's flame illuminating his hollow-cheeked face in the twilight. He couldn't leave him like that, that much he knew. If nothing for the sense of duty which had been ingrained in him.

"Are you hungry?" he asked him and the blond lifted his eyes, frowning slightly as if the thought hadn't even occurred to him.

"I suppose." he answered slowly, exhaling a cloud of smoke and eyeing him questioningly, while his hands shook and his fingers closed tighter around the cigarette when it nearly slipped off.

"Come then." he told him and turned, striding off. He cast a glance behind his shoulder and saw Frerin frown again, before he hunched his head and followed him.

  
  


The ice clinked in the glass and Dwalin leaned with his back against the wall. The clock on the wall showed it was nearly midnight. He was working the morning shift again and he really needed to get some sleep, but the events of the day kept replaying in his head and he had ached for a glass of scotch for most of it.

He took a gulp of the amber liquid, closing his eyes for a moment. When he opened them his living room was still there, unchanged. Barkith slept on the rug near his armchair, moving her legs in her sleep, clearly dreaming. The coffee table was empty save from the remote control which had been placed haphazardly on the edge of it. And on the sofa, covered by one of Dwalin's spare blankets, Frerin slept.

He truly had no idea what he was doing, but after fixing supper for the two of them and watching Frerin try to push down some food, it had simply been natural to offer him his a place to sleep. After all, he had nowhere to go - Dwalin and his colleagues had made sure of that with that morning's raid.

And it was Frerin, the dwarven prince whose ashes had been scattered in the wind after Azanulbizar and Dwalin had not forgotten how it had hurt to find him, slashed from neck to gut amongst piles of bodies, dwarven and orcish alike - it had been as painful as seeing his father's body, eyes mercifully closed and blood washed away.

Frerin who had been his friend in a way. They had never sparred or wrestled on Dunland's dry ground - like Dwalin had done with Thorin - and he had always been too rough on the edges for the likes of the younger prince who had been all music and wide-eyed marvelling at the world around them. Unlike Dwalin he _had_ been born under the Mountain, and yet instead of longing for its fabled halls, Frerin had admired the wilderness they had been forced to cross, gaping at the sight of the Misty Mountains, looming in the distance or the black shaft of the Orthanc in the Wizard's Vale. Their interactions had always been few and far in between, but the precious times he had spent with the golden haired prince who had played his lute, smiling brightly while Dwalin played his viol, had wedged a place for Frerin in his soul.

And seeing him broken on the battlefield had been one of the _wrongest_ sights Dwalin had witnessed in his long days. He had never been a warrior, he should have never fought at Azanulbizar. Dwalin gulped down the rest of the scotch, feeling it burn away the old pain. He shouldn't have fought, but he had and he had died.

He was alive now, though. Sleeping fitfully on Dwalin's sofa and he knew he was likely going through withdrawal, he _was_ an addict, than much had been made plain obvious, even if Dwalin hadn't already realised it before, when the blond had removed his soaked hoodie and the T-shirt he had been wearing underneath had done little to cover his yellowed, bruised skin, marked with a constellation of needle holes. It had made Dwalin feel an anger which still simmered in the pit of his stomach. It was wrong. Frerin was made to gape at the beauty of the world, not to rot from within.

Dwalin glared at the ice which melted on the bottom of his empty glass and he walked back to the kitchen, slamming it in the sink too loudly, but only Barkith stirred, getting back to sleep after she yawned widely. He needed to get some sleep. Anger did him no good.

  
  


He needed a fix. He opened his eyes to a foreign ceiling and his fragmented mind sluggishly supplied him with the necessary knowledge and Frerin remembered the evening before, food and a clean sofa, faintly smelling of dog. _Dwalin_. It was Dwalin's home. Dwalin, who was truly there.

But he wasn't. He shook his pounding head. The house was silent, except for the sounds the black dog who was sitting at the feet of the sofa was making. It had a name, but Frerin couldn't remember. He needed a fix. He needed it with a sharp painful desperation. His mind was a maelstrom of sickness and the only fixed point was a black hole of _need_.

He peeled himself off the sofa, feeling his legs somehow manage to carry the infinite weight that was his emaciated mind which pressed, _suffocated_ him. He needed to get his hands on something. He needed a fix.

The dog had gotten to its feet and it looked at him with its large brown beady eyes. It barked lightly, but Frerin had one only thought in his mind. He found his still wet trainers in the hallway and he managed to put them on, his hands shaking horribly while he fumbled with the strings. The black dog had followed him and it licked his hand while he tried to lace his shoes, leaning on the coat-rack. He needed a fix.

"Go away. " he told the dog, but his words seemed to be filtered by molasses and he didn't even know if he had truly pronounced them. He _needed that fix._ Now.

He managed to unlock the door, fumbling with the lock and the dog barked again, but he walked out and closed the door.

He needed a fix.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title taken from “White foxes” by Susanne Sundfør.


	2. And although I was burning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Silences and silences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it took me so long (compared to my usual updating speed), but these two had refused to collaborate with me until this afternoon, so blame it on them. :p

The keys rattled in his pocket. He was balancing the grocery bags in his left arm, while he rummaged with his other hand through his jacket's pocket, struggling to fish them out. After several muttered curses Dwalin managed to get them out and put the key into his apartment door's keyhole.

He turned it, but nothing happened. He frowned, trying to turn the doorknob and the door opened. Dwalin entered his home with a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach and his dog's barks greeted him in the otherwise silent apartment.

He knew without looking that Frerin had left.

He put the bags on the kitchen table before he walked into the living room without bothering to take his jacket off. His spare blanket lay tossed in a corner of the empty sofa and Dwalin stopped in the middle of the living room, glowering at the dimly lit room where Frerin should have been but was not. Barkith had followed him and was currently waggling her tail trying to get his attention and, shaking his head, he bent towards the dog to scratch her behind the ears.

“He's gone, isn't he, lass?” he asked the dog who licked his hand as a reply.

He huffed a sigh before he walked to the light switch to turn it on. The late afternoon twilight drowned in the yellow glow of the ceiling lamp and Dwalin took off his jacket, hanging it off the rack in the hallway.

He knew he shouldn't be surprised Frerin had left. The signs of withdrawal had been plain on him the night before – the fidgeting, the beads of sweat on his clammy skin. Dwalin knew the other man had been desperate for a fix, but – expected as it had been – he couldn't help feeling the sharp bite of disappointment at the knowledge the former prince had left, not even a note in his wake.

Dwalin grimaced, busying himself with the groceries, while his scowl deepened as the minutes trickled by. It had been foolish to hope his actions the day before would have changed anything for the erstwhile dwarf. He had dealt with enough junkies since he had joined the forces to know the way things went.

And that in turn made him worry.

Frerin's existence was precarious at best. All it took was one wrong shot – too much, too pure or simply cut with the wrong substance – and he would be gone for good. Again.

He pulled the sash window open and he leaned over the kitchen counter and glowered, inhaling the cold air while he tried to keep his anger at bay. Helplessness had always made him want to vent his frustration on something – or someone – and often it had made him act foolishly. With the passing of the decades – of the _centuries –_ Dwalin had learned to quell it, to control himself, but as he listened to the noise of the traffic coming from the street underneath, he felt it simmer within him.

Frerin had left and Dwalin couldn't bear the thought of failing him once again. The reek of blood and gore of  _that_ battlefield, the sharp tang of burning flesh as their dead had been laid to rest on the pyres and the way the orange flames had licked Frerin's golden hair, it was all sharp in his mind's eye, cutting like a blade to the gut. And he could not stand it.

He  _had_ to do something.

What, he did not know. Doing had always been easier for him than thinking – he had always left it to his brother to ponder on the whys and what ifs, while he acted. All he knew was that he  _had_ to find Frerin.

And keep him safe – even if Frerin seemed bent to do the utmost to destroy himself. 

He pulled the window down with more force than necessary and it slammed on the frame. Barkith lifted her head questioningly, the rope she had been chewing dangling from her mouth. 

He had to do  _something._

  
  


Barkith. The dog's name was Barkith. He stretched his arms, still feeling a residual itch inside his flesh and he ached to scratch it out, digging his nails into his own skin – and if thoughts peeled off along with the grime that was him through and through, he wouldn't have minded it. His head lay on the threadbare armrest of the smelly sofa he had commandeered as his own, and he felt the rough edge of the wood stick through the crumbling sponge and fabric.

He felt sluggish and his mind was blissfully meek in the aftermath of the customary confusion which followed the rush. His thoughts were sharpening, bit by bit, but he found himself thinking of the large watery eyes of Dwalin's dog and it was a brief respite from the twisting maze of loathsome thoughts which usually coursed through his mind. It was something different, something uncorrupted yet by him.

The _whole encounter_ had been different. Strange. He had followed Dwalin into the other man's home, unable to wrap his splintered mind around the fact that it was _Dwalin_. That it was someone he had known _before_ – before the nightmares had come to life and _Frerin_ along with them had been cast into another bag of flesh, much like his old body had been and yet profoundly different, nearly unbearably different. That it was someone who had known him when there had been someone to know, something other than decay.

The thought was a strangling wire biting into the skin of his throat because Frerin was dead and Charlie was gone, and _he_ didn't know what he was any more, other than a tangle of fractured thoughts, sharp like broken glass, which pierced and slashed from his mind to his muscles. The holes he had put inside his skin would never match the exit wounds of his soul which had been ripped, shredded and he wanted to die, but he was a coward and dying was painful. He would know.

But so did Dwalin. Dwalin who had known him as Frerin, known him before his breath had been ripped off his windpipe – and it hadn't been that jagged orcish blade, the one he could still picture with morbid clarity, but words. It was _always_ words which cut down to the bone. Words.

He hadn't said many, though. Dwalin had barely spoken during the hours they had spent together, firstly getting to the small apartment the other man shared with his dog and later forcing the proffered food down to his nauseous stomach. No, Dwalin had never been eloquent, he had never talked much, expressing himself with his body – crossing his bulky arms and glowering, snarling at Frerin's brother when the two dwarrows had sparred, but also staring pensively into distance while his fingers and bow had moved on the strings of his viol. He found himself aching for the simplicity of those few memories – the few unspoilt ones which he treasured in the last pocket of wholeness, the ones which he seldom sought out for fear of ruining those precious few memories with the foulness that was his every breath.

He was quicksand which swallowed all that had once been good and sound, and when his mind spat it out nothing was left unchanged and he could not bear the thought of hearing Dís' chiming laughter distorted into the dissonance of his thoughts, or the small smile on Thorin's solemn face twisting into a grimace of the inescapable disgust he felt for himself when he rolled his body and his nose got buried in the musty fabric of the sofa which reeked of bodily fluids, of vomit – most likely his own.

No, he couldn't bear touching those immaculate memories. Dwalin was in them, with his dark brown mohawk whipping in the wind as they walked through the Wilderness, or the notes which flowed from the strings of his viol – mournful, wistful, sometimes merry, but never angry, never harsh. Even if rage had been etched in every sinew, in every joint of the burly dwarf A rage which had blazed in his steely blue eyes, biting through Dwalin and swallowing him almost whole, in spite of his youth.

He had been practically born to wrath – he had been much too small a dwarfling when innocence had been ripped away from him - and Frerin had always watched Dwalin and Thorin with a leaden knot in the pit of his stomach. He had watched them dance to the twisted jig of fury, circling one another with their axes and swords, and it had been wrong.

Wrong, because Thorin had been grinning pride and majesty and all which a dwarven prince had been supposed to be. He had been perfect, flawless, until all had been taken away form him and nothing but all-consuming rage and stubbornness had been left. The day the dragon had come part of his brother had died.

And Dwalin... Dwalin whose bow had made his viol weep with grief and sigh in contemplation, gasp in surprise and sing so softly. He had sometimes closed his eyes while the music coursed through him and Frerin had simply played his lute on, his own fingers moving in well-practised motions while his eyes had taken in every little detail, in the scratches on his knuckles, the coarseness of his beard and hair, the slackness of his lips, free from the shackles of a scowl.

It had been wrong, utterly so, to see those precious few moments of peace shatter and hear a growl escape his mouth, watch him bare his teeth and charge, axes in his hands. All that rage had been wrong.

But it was gone. As his strangely compliant mind carried him out of those unsullied memories, he couldn't help thinking that there had been no trace of that overwhelming wrath in the other man's pale eyes. There had been a stalwart resignation and a sparkle of something too delicate to be named, a fledgling emotion which could have been joy.

And it had been right. After all the wrongness it had been right to gaze into the other man's eyes and see something which was not distorted, something simple. So he had stayed, accepting Dwalin's offer to sleep on his sofa because he had not wanted to break that moment, that present which had been bestowed upon him free of the cancer which ate all that he touched. It hadn't been a memory he could corrupt as it passed through the spectrum of his poisoned mind. Dwalin had been there, in the flesh, he and his dog – Barkith – and he – Frerin, Charlie, nobody – had not wanted to leave.

But he had had to.

The black gaping hole of _need –_ the same one he was starting to feel as it stirred within him - had been strong, too strong and Barkith's barks and big beady eyes had not been enough to stop him. Nothing would. He was a slave of himself, of the rot which were his body and mind.

He turned on his back, looking at the dark ceiling above him. It had been so incredibly simple to sit there, at Dwalin's kitchen table. He had felt almost human, almost whole and in spite of his headache he had been able to think about something other that the revulsion he felt for himself.

It drew him like a moth to a flame. It wasn't a cold need, tearing through his body and _demanding_. No, it was almost a giddy wish to see Dwalin again, to be out of the horror show of his mind – if only for the briefest while – to be around someone who was not as tainted as him.

It was strange. It made him almost feel alive. And as the cold fingers of withdrawal began to trail down his skin he felt the weight of that last shot, securely wrapped inside his pocket and for the first time in years, he hesitated.

  
  


Dwalin pushed the front door of the building open, stepping inside the dimly lit entrance hall. He was tired and frustrated. It had been nearly a month since he had seen Frerin and he had spent nearly every free moment trying to find him. But with no results. And he wanted nothing but to collapse on his armchair, drinking a generous glass of scotch - or two – while he tried not to ponder on his failure.

He ascended the stairs, feeling a scowl curl his lip and saw the lass who lived on the first floor get out of her apartment. She made to flash Dwalin a smile, but after a glance at his expression she only widened her eyes and muttered something indiscernible which might have been a greeting, before she hurried past him and Dwalin shook his head wearily. He was too tired for this.

It had been so easy to find Frerin the day they had arrested him – all Dwalin had had to do had been to search a couple of blocks near the police station before he had found him smoking under a balcony. But he had no trail now and he knew he was looking for a needle in a haystack. Especially since he was investigating on his own. Dwalin was loath to ask any of his colleagues for a hand – they would ask questions and Dwalin could not give them answers, at least not truthful ones.

Still, he had persisted. He had inquired with some of the people they had in custody and he had gone to all the usual gathering places, but he had looked too much like the cop he was and more than once he had been recognised by people whose arrest he had been involved with – and that had made it for a couple of rather unpleasant encounters, but Dwalin had been used to worse. Yet, it all seemed to lead nowhere.

The only silver lining was that at least Frerin was not dead – checking the deceased had been the first thing he had done every single day in the past weeks and the relief of knowing no man fitting Frerin's description had been found dead was the only thing that still kept him pushing forward.

He passed the third floor's lading and ascended the last flight of stairs. He had no idea how to proceed at this juncture, but he _couldn't_ give up.

He reached his landing and strode towards his apartment's door. He had just taken out his keys when he noticed movement with the corner of his eyes and he instinctively pivoted on the spot.

Dwalin's eyes were wide in bewilderment and stood frozen on the spot for a long heartbeat, while he put out the cigarette he had been smoking.

“Frerin?” he asked, frowning and shaking his head at the same time “How... what are you doing here?”

He got up from the stair he had been sitting on, waiting for the other man to get back home – his resolution weakening as the hours had trickled by and damp tendrils of withdrawal had begun to coil around his limbs. He had tried to keep in his shaky mind the reason he had come there in the first place – the same one which had made him stay that night, weeks ago. He had done nothing but replay that encounter in the blissful moments when his mind had not tortured him with memories he had not wished to have and thoughts that had made him want to crawl in that crevice in the wall, where the beetles had used to come out and he had been no better than them.

“I... well.” he began, but his mouth was dry and sticky “I wanted to see you.”

Day after day he had tethered between the wish to come and see Dwalin and the knowledge it would only be a plaster on the gaping wound that was his brain. But in the end his weakness had won – like it always did – and he had yielded to the desire to spend at least the briefest moment in the former dwarf's company.

“And I wanted to apologise for leaving like that, but I...” he trailed, unsure.

“But you needed a fix.” Dwalin spat, his steely blue eyes unreadable and he felt himself grimace.

“Yeah.” he said and Dwalin looked at him for a long moment before turning away from him and unlocking his apartment's door.

“Come on in, then.” he told him, pushing it open. The dog barked in greeting and he hesitated a moment before following Dwalin inside.

  
  


Frerin sat on the armchair his shoulders slightly hunched while he nursed a bottle of beer, without really drinking it. He looked as bad as he had when Dwalin had last seen him and in truth he could scarcely believe it the other man was sitting in his living room.

“How are you?” he asked him, the question sounding stupid to his own ears, but there were silences and silences and the one that had descended upon them since they had entered Dwalin's home had been a stifling one that needed to be ousted.

“I suppose I should say I'm fine.” the blond answered “That's the polite thing to say, right?”

Frerin's eyes still held a distant sparkle of that light which had once filled them, but the bitterness that had crept into his voice did not belong to him. But neither did the hollowness of his cheeks, or the sickly paleness of his skin.

“Where are you staying?” he asked him.

“Here and there.” Frerin answered, taking a sip of his beer, while his hands fidgeted with the bottle, shaking lightly.

Dwalin scowled, feeling angry once again but it wasn't helplessness, it was the righteous kind of anger which he had always felt before charging into battle. All of it was just wrong.

“You can stay here.” he said bluntly, the fact that he had no place to stay, obvious by his answer and Frerin blinked.

“I... thank you, but I don't think that would be a good idea.” he replied, not really looking at him “I can't stay here. I mean, you're a cop, you arrest people like me”

And that he did, but this was Frerin and he _had_ to do something.

“Don't give me a reason to arrest you then.” he rebutted matter of factly and Frerin huffed a dry laugh.

He was sorely tempted to take the other man upon his offer, he was. Anywhere was better than the places he stayed and he _wanted_ to be around Dwalin, if only for a little while.

“You make it sound simple.” he told him, his hands shaking and he nearly spilled his beer on the carpet.

“That's because it is.” Dwalin told him and he just looked at him, unblinking, his expression earnest “As long as you're clean you can stay here for as long as you want.”

_As long as he stayed clean._ It was tempting to stay at Dwalin's but he couldn't. He  _couldn't_ stay clean. Withdrawal was already kicking in and his head was beginning to ache. He could resist for a while but it was a matter of hours before he  _needed_ to get a fix. 

He could not stay clean. Staying clean was torture. Staying clean was having to hear his mind wail with all the repressed pain that had gathered in the cracks of his thoughts. It was suffocating in the deafening echo of all the words, all the biting and ripping sentences that had been sewed into the tissue of his soul and they  _burned_ .

_He couldn't stay clean._

Dwalin sat on the sofa, staring at him while he waited for an answer and there was the glint of hope in his pale eyes, of a very small and very cautious hope, but he could see it and it made his already nauseous stomach squirm. He could not accept Dwalin's offer, but his unuttered refusal tasted bitter in his mouth, but perhaps that was just the bile that kept rising up his gullet.

He wanted to refuse, but at the same time he truly _wanted_ to accept and he was torn between the siren call of his overwhelming need and Dwalin's offer, which was no less alluring - and he wanted to rip himself apart and choose both, but he knew he couldn't.

In the end he knew what choice he was going to make but looking at the former dwarf who was still patiently waiting for his deliberation – even if his light blue eyes were anything but patient – he felt everything inside him scream against it, wanting to claw into the fabric of the armchair and force him to _stay._ But he couldn't stay clean.

He couldn't.

Although, perhaps... perhaps he could manage a day? Two? He had been without a fix for longer than a couple of days and he had lived it through. And there was a relative silence in his mind that somehow Dwalin managed to summon, so maybe he could endure it for a bit... He had used his last shot anyway, so he would not be able to get a fix before he got some cash - and getting it was _never_ pleasant.

Hope flared within him and it was warm not scorching like need would be.

He could at least try...

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title taken from “Only If For A Night” by Florence + The Machine.


	3. When the trouble is you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Days and nightmares.

The tiles were cold under his knees and he leaned his hands on his thighs, trying to keep his upper body upright. The taste of bile burned his mouth and he wanted to rinse it, but he would have to stand up to do so and he felt drained of all energy. A week. It had been a week since he had accepted Dwalin's offer to stay at his place - a week since he had taken his last fix - and he knew he couldn't go on like this. He _couldn't._

The past days had been a lucid nightmare where his limbs had been chained in the aches that had coursed through them, followed by the cold wanton fingers of a need which had grown stronger with each hour, tearing him apart and making all _those_ thoughts pour into his consciousness the same way his stomach heaved all the food he had tried to force inside it. He had felt ripped apart as every voice, every sneer and accusation had deafened him from within, echoing into infinity within that timeless space which was his rotten mind. Every single hour minute second had been horrid and unbearable, and the sole clear thought had been - and still was - that he needed a fix. That he needed that shot of poison which would anaesthetise his mind, muffle the voices and allow him to breathe without that garotte biting into his throat and the might of all his disgust sitting on his chest like a mountain, crushing his lungs while his heartbeats gathered speed and ran ran ran so fast he could picture his still beating heart plummeting out of his chest - and wouldn't it be good? Wouldn't it finally bring _peace_?

He felt another wave of nausea rise within him and he wondered if there was anything inside him to be retched other than his soul - and _that_ he would gladly flush, parting ways with all the thoughts and memories, with every tear and makeshift stitch which had never been good enough to hold, not for long. He needed a fix, he had needed one since he had entered Dwalin's apartment seven days prior and hadn't left in the meanwhile. And he _should_ have. His body and mind were both screaming, ripping their hair out for him to leave, to go and do what he did - _whatever_ he had to - and get some cash. Get a fix.

But every time he had made to lift his emaciated body and _do it,_ he had hesitated, telling himself he could resist a bit more, just until Dwalin returned from work, just until Dwalin woke up. And when the erstwhile dwarf would make his silent appearance, he would resolve to wait some more, because how _could_ he disappoint him when Dwalin watched him with that same cautious hope in his steely eyes which grew bolder with each passing day and the other man would actually _smile_ at him when he came back from work and _-_ Frerin he kept calling him, but Frerin was _dead... - he_ was still there.

And even if he wanted to rip his own jugular out - or simply get a fix, _anything_ just to make the agony stop - that small curve of Dwalin's lips, framed by his brown beard had made him feel like vermin in a way that hurt more than the sneering of the ghost voices within his memories, because he wanted - _needed_ \- to leave.

He leaned forward to empty his already drained stomach, but predictably nothing came out. Somehow, bracing himself on the tiled walls he managed to stand up on his wobbly feet. He felt so tired, so wrung out and dried, like bone left to the scorching sun. He opened the tap and leaned forward, rinsing his mouth from the bile which had corroded his throat. He spat out the water while his hands clenched the edges of the sink, the water still running. Like he should.

He should run. He should go.

A week. It had been a week and he had never stayed clean for so long, he _didn't know_ what lay ahead, other than more agony and _thoughts._ His mind had grown stronger with each day and he wondered if it would ever stop or if it would just overwhelm him, drowning him in his own grey matter, choking him with his own synapses.

He lifted his head and gazed at his own reflection in the mirror. He didn't recognise himself, but that had been so for much longer than his stay at Dwalin's. It had been years since he had gazed at a mirror and saw _himself_. All he saw now was a wraith, a dead man standing in a small bathroom - pale waxy skin and deep dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, blond stubble growing long, almost a beard - and he _was_ a dead man, or at least he knew he was going to be, sooner than later and it didn't bother him, not at all. Death would be silence. Peace.

Unless fate was cruel and he got thrown into yet _another_ life - and he couldn't bear the thought of more decades of wanting nothing but to rip his brain out of the confines of his skull.

He needed a fix. He truly did. It had been a week and that was just too much. He couldn't bear it any longer - he couldn't bear himself any longer.

He stepped away from the sink and sluggishly moved towards the door. His body felt too heavy and he was so _tired._ His fingers found the light switch and the bathroom was cast into darkness for the moment it took him to open the door and step into the hallway.

Where he nearly tripped over the dog.

Barkith was lying in front of the door, happily chewing the remnants of a tennis ball and she - it was a she, he had learned - eagerly lifted her head the moment she heard him, dark brown eyes - only a shade lighter than her short black fur - looking at him merrily. She waggled her tail, nudging him with her head and he knew he should stride forward and grab his hoodie from the coat rack, put his trainers on and leave, but she nudged him again and he was so tired, so devoid of all strength.

He slid down to the floor and leaned his back on the wood of the bathroom door. She put her head on his lap and he closed his eyes while his hand reached forward to scratch her behind her ears. Barkith snuggled by his side, warm against his shivering body his touch and he knew he _would_ go, there was no choice for him, but Dwalin _was_ going to come home soon, wasn't he? And he was so exhausted. He _could_ wait an hour or two. He could.

  
  


The apartment was quiet when Dwalin opened the door. He stilled in the doorway. He knew that silence. It was the same one which had greeted him some five weeks prior when he had returned from work. When Frerin had been gone.

And just like before he knew it wasn't unexpected, but he scowled as he cursed himself nonetheless for having been foolish enough to think it would last - that _he_ would last.

It had been a week after all, a whole week of agony. Dwalin had seen what withdrawal did to Frerin. He had seen his body shivering under the blanket, damp from sweat, and insomnia making the dark circles under his eyes grow starker in contrast with his wan hollow cheeks. It had made him angry to see him so. Even though he knew it was necessary.

A part of him wanted nothing but to hack to pieces whomever was responsible for Frerin's state and it was an anger he had not felt in a long time - the centuries had drained his rage and he had seldom lost his temper in this new life, but ever since he had seen Frerin, five weeks prior, laying on that filthy mattress in the squat they had been raiding, the flames of anger had licked more and more often inside him. It wasn't _right_ for Frerin to be reduced so. It _wasn't._ And yet a different part of him, which spoke in a voice which sounded eerily like Balin's reminded him that it was all very likely Frerin's own doing, that there was no enemy to challenge - to defeat. None but Frerin himself.

And that was a foe he was helpless against.

But it didn't matter now - he thought, getting inside his home - Frerin was gone. He had stayed for a week and Dwalin had hoped. But he was gone and would he go and look for him again? Would he spend another month going through all the usual gathering places, looking for him? Would he look through the deceased, waiting for the inevitable day when Frerin _would_ be amongst them?

He felt his scowl deepen as he locked the door. Could he give up on him? He pocketed the keys with anger. And suddenly stopped as a realisation slammed into his mind.

The door had been locked.

His eyes widened and much like he had done a month before, Dwalin strode into the living room without bothering to take his jacket off, while he held his breath. Could it...

He felt his shoulders sag in relief as his eyes took in the sight of the erstwhile dwarven prince fast asleep on the sofa with Barkith snuggled next to him and he exhaled through his nose, shaking his head. Frerin was lying on his side, one arm placed under his head - blond hair askew - while the other embraced the back of Dwalin's dog, keeping - an equally asleep - Barkith close, her muzzle snuggled in the crook of his neck.

Dwalin's lips tilted upwards as he watched Frerin's slumbering form. After days of sleeplessness, the blond's face was peaceful while his chest rose and fell, and soft snoring barely disturbed the silence of the living room. He was glad Frerin was finally getting some rest at last. Noticing the way he had curled around Barkith, Dwalin took the old blanket which had been kicked down from the sofa and placed it over both Frerin and the dog. Frerin buried his head in the brown fabric, still asleep and sparing a last glance in the former Prince's direction, Dwalin quietly walked out of the living room, taking his jacket off in the process.

He entered the kitchen a moment later and took out a bottle of beer from the fridge. The fresh bitterness of it cut through the echo of the misplaced anger and disappointment he had felt only minutes prior, and he found himself shaking his head at the speed with which he had jumped to conclusions. Wrong ones. Dwalin leaned against the kitchen counter, looking at the crack in the ceiling just above the table. His nerves were too taut.

It wasn't just Frerin. No, there were the events of the past day which were weighting on his mind. He took a generous gulp of beer. It had been a difficult morning. They had raided what had been supposed to be just another squat full of junkies, but things had suddenly gotten ugly. Dwalin had been in the next room when it had happened and he and MacKenzie had been the first to reach them when they heard the shots. One of the squatters - a drug dealer - had been armed and had fired at Thompson and the lad - Williams - who had been with him. The older officer had been blessedly lucky - a hairbreadth to the left and he would have been dead on the spot, rather than ending up with a set of stitches on his scalp where the bullet had grazed him. But the other officer, who had been on his first raid had taken a bullet in his thigh and the wound had bled profusely. Dwalin had tried to stop the bleeding while they waited for the ambulance and for a moment he had been thrown back at Azanulbizar, on Ravenhill, on the slopes of Erebor, in that small tent which had housed his mother, his uncle and him while his father and Balin had gone ahead to Dunland with the King - and it had been his _amad_ who had been lying broken, the gaping wound in her belly larger than Dwalin's small hands.

Williams had bled and they still didn't know if he would make it. MacKenzie had promised to let him know the moment they heard news from the hospital and he had merely nodded before leaving the station. He finished his beer and left the empty bottle by the sink. It was shit day. An utter shit day.

But at least Frerin was still there. One more day.

  
  


He had slept. For three nights in a row he had slept. He chewed on the eggs Dwalin had made for breakfast and his stomach protested, but he forced himself to eat. It was better to retch food than just bile and feel his stomach clench on its own emptiness. Dwalin was wolfing down his own plate of eggs before he had to get back to the station and he - Frerin he kept insisting to call him - he tried to reason with the fact that he had slept three whole nights without waking up. It was a notion so alien to him he couldn't understand it. But it was... _good_ , he supposed, frowning at his fork.

He felt slightly better this morning than he had felt in the past ten days and for the first time in a long while he wondered what to do. He was still bone weary and even holding his fork seemed like a feat, but his mind was clearer than it had been in the longest time and the need to get away, to go and get himself a fix was there, yes - it would _always_ be there - but it didn't feel as overwhelming as it had been in the past days. He still felt drained and disgusting - disgust was an old companion, the oldest perhaps, the one which had followed him through death - but he _knew_ he would be there when Dwalin returned from work and while it was a startling thought, there was a warm comfort to it that left him more flabbergasted than the fact he had actually slept. Truly, dreamlessly slept.

Comfort was something he didn't know what to do with, it was almost fearsome, but there was no fight in him, there was no energy to rebel against anything, not even the feeling his world was slowly and inexorably being tilted upside down. He felt a bluntness to the edge of his thoughts that wasn't quite the numbness only a fix would get him, but was  _ almost _ bearable. Even if he knew it was just an illusion. It was only a matter of time before the quiet shattered into a thousand million sharp smithereens which would lodge themselves into his consciousness, bleeding him dry, ripping him apart. Nothing  _ good  _ could last.

"Do you still play?" Dwalin suddenly asked and he lifted his head abruptly, torn from his thoughts. 

The other man was gulping down a glass of orange juice. He waited for him to answer, curiosity lodged in his pale blue eyes and for a moment he didn't understand his question.

And then it dawned on him. Music.

"It's been a long time." he replied at last, trying to remember the last time he had played something - had it been a guitar?

The piano had been his love, the perfect instrument and he had been  _ good _ , Charlie had been truly good. He remembered how his fingers had raced over the keys, barely touching them but making them sing and moan with all the notes which had flown through him. He had been merely a vessel between the music and the strings, turning the imaginary into something real, ephemeral and beautiful, like only music could be. 

Nothing had ever felt so right as playing - as right as it could anything have been when  _ he  _ was out of joint, when Charlie, like Frerin, had already been cracked through. But his insides hadn't shown yet. They hadn't shown.

But they did now. All the decay that festered within him slithered out of the gaping holes of his soul and there was much, too much and more which had been added. Frerin had died to disgust and nightmares and Charlie had lived them, but for  _ him  _ the nightmares were not a plague upon his slumber like Charlie's had been. For him they were all.

"I have a guitar, if you fancy playing." Dwalin said, pulling out of his thoughts once again and he blinked, not sure what to make of his offer. 

"I... thanks, I guess." he replied. 

"I'll leave it out, then." Dwalin stated, standing up "I must be on my way."

"Okay." he replied, nodding and watching the tall man wash his plate in the sink. A guitar. Would he...  _ could  _ he play it? He was almost afraid of even trying. It had truly been long since he had played an instrument and he was broken from within - what if wouldn't be able to feel the music any more? Could... could he  _ stand  _ it? For both Frerin and Charlie music had been everything. It was one of the precious things. One of the  _ unsullied  _ things. 

Dwalin closed the tap and dried his hands on a kitchen rag. It was almost surreal, to sit there, in Dwalin's kitchen thinking about music, about  _ playing  _ it, and being more aware of his surroundings than he was of his need - the need that followed him with the same devotion Barkith followed the erstwhile warrior who was currently putting his jacket on in the hallway.

It was all so confusing. And he felt tired. He put down his fork and looked down at the remnants of the already cool eggs on his plate, feeling queasy. 

  
  


His eyes blinked open and for a disoriented moment he stared at the darkness of his bedroom. Then he heard it. Barkith's whines and barks, and Dwalin threw the covers off himself, feeling the cold floor under his bare feet. He strode out of his bedroom, following the sounds his dog was making and he entered the living-room to find Barkith standing in front of the sofa, perturbed at the frantic tossing and turning of Frerin.

"Shh, lass." he told his dog as he approached the sofa.

Frerin's breathing was shallow and he was covered in sweat. Dwalin tried calling out his name to wake him from the nightmare he was obviously having, but if he had managed to sleep through Barkith's insistent barking, Dwalin doubted any amount of noise would help. But he had to wake him somehow.

"Frerin!" he called again, grabbing him by his shoulders and shaking him lightly.

"Frerin!" he shook him with more force and the blond suddenly opened his blue eyes wide, gasping for breath and trying to get away from him. Dwalin immediately made to release him, but Frerin grabbed his arms, holding him in place with a grip much too strong for someone so skinny.

"Dwalin?" he rasped, confusion etched on his forehead.

"You had a nightmare." he told him, half bent over him where his hands still held him.

Frerin didn't say anything for the longest time, eyeing him with a wildness that slowly receded and Dwalin wondered what he had been dreaming about, what horrors had put that look in his blue eyes. 

He gazed at his eyes while they stood motionless, feeling his heart pound loudly in his ears while Frerin's laboured breaths made his chest rise and fall. He felt his fingers on his biceps and it was hard not to focus on the unyielding grip. 

Or the smell of shampoo mingled with sweat which caught his attention, turning his eyes from the deep deep blue of Frerin's to his golden hair, all in disarray.

Something was stirring within him, half asleep as he was after the abrupt awakening, mere minutes before. Something was stirring, and it was more than the urge to protect Frerin, to keep him safe because the Prince was precious beyond measure. It slammed into him with a force, with a depth, that made him swallow dryly and gape.

Something stirred within him and he leaned forward on sheer instinct. No thought, no understanding of his own actions, just feeling the overwhelming urge to drown in those eyes - which were still fastened on his - to close the distance...

_ Had he lost his mind?! _

Dwalin suddenly pushed himself away from Frerin, tearing off the other man's grip and Frerin eyed him in bemusement while Dwalin shook his head, his eyes wide.

_ What had gotten into him? _

"Dwalin? Is everything alright?" Frerin inquired, with a frown, sitting up and Dwalin looked at him, from where he was standing. 

Too shocked at what he had nearly done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title taken from “The Troubles” by U2.


	4. Always keep 'em on a leash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Strings that sing, strings that bind.

 

A fine layer of dust had begun gathering atop the guitar case, light in contrast with the umber faux leather. It stood, untouched, against the wall where Dwalin had put it for him to play it - should he want to. And he did. He _wanted_ to play. He had been eyeing it for the past nine days and he could almost imagine it silently waiting for him to open the clasps and take the instrument out. His fingers itched to touch the biting tautness of the metal strings against his fingertips – just like the lute Frerin had played and nothing like the smooth keys Charlie's fingers had caressed with the dedication of a lover, building pillars of notes and halls of silences, chiselling and carving the lines of melodies. But the fingers in his right hand had been broken one time too many and Charlie had been forced to forsake it, not long before he had forsaken himself - before all had vanished in the ear-piercing shrieks of orcs and the biting, cutting, _scorching_ words that had pierced him through.

And he bled.

Charlie had loved the piano, its delicacy and might, its overwhelming fullness of sound that had made him think of giant statues carved from the flanks of a mountain and yet subtle in their details - and the piano had been completion for him, the one thing he had always missed without knowing it, his vein of _mithril._ But there was none left to mine for him.

He sat on the edge of the sofa and he ached inside his marrow for the sound of a note, for the moment of hesitation before the music poured out of him like the crystal water of the River Running. He yearned to feel the music with the same fierceness with which _need_ throbbed on the forefront of his mind as it whispered to him the quiet wouldn't last.

Would he be able to get himself a fix once the illusion shattered and he drowned in the slime that lingered under the thin film of his consciousness? Would he be able to function for the brief while it took to secure some cash, to find a pusher and get himself a fix? Would he be able to walk out of Dwalin's apartment?

No. He wouldn't.

Because getting a fix would lead him away from the sofa he was currently sitting on. It would lead him away from the comforting warmth of Barkith who was resting with her head on his sock-clad foot.

It would lead him away from Dwalin. And his mind could implode in a tangle of broken synapses and nightmares could strangle his breaths, but he couldn't bear the thought of never seeing him again.

Of _disappointing_ him.

He swallowed, fumbling through his pockets for the battered package of cigarettes Dwalin had kindly purchased for him and he lifted himself from the sofa, dragging his feet to the window and lifting it open. He took a cigarette out and pressed it between his lips, flicking the lighter twice before the flame caught and he inhaled the smoke almost greedily. He leaned on the windowsill, the warm spring air mixing with the smell of nicotine and he closed his eyes for a moment.

He may not be Frerin any more, but for Dwalin he was. The erstwhile dwarven warrior wanted him around – was even _happy_ of it, even if he couldn't understand the sentiment - but there were conditions, expectations and it would take so little so cock everything up. And he couldn't, _couldn't_ disappoint him,

He took a drag on the cigarette, feeling the smoke fill his lungs, before he exhaled his slowly, watching the silvery wisps of smoke disappear. The past weeks had been deceitfully bearable and chaos lurked just behind the corner. He felt it in the dampness of his shivering body when he awoke from his nightmares, in the chains of thought which quickly led him towards dangerous slopes and he would see with the corner of the eye the sharp spikes of all which had been kept silent for years - which had been sewed tight under his skin by the thin needle that had pricked it. Over and over. Bringing silence.

His mind was something he would have gladly annihilated, but he couldn't. He _wouldn't_.

Even if the wire taut around his neck finally bit through the skin and his blood poured out, flushing him from any thought, any memory – from life – he wouldn't go. Even if he was clean - far too clean - to be able to function. Guilt was a vice chewing into the walls of his stomach as it squeezed and he couldn't go, he couldn't bear failing Dwalin the way he had failed everyone in both his lives.

And he had really tried, he had struggled in earnest, but it had never been enough. He had never been enough.

He rubbed his temples with his hands, opening his eyes and looking at the guitar-case.

He sighed, putting the cigarette out, half-smoked as it was and walking towards the corner. Barkith lifted her head, her brown eyes looking at him questioningly while he bent over the case and opened it, gingerly taking out an acoustic guitar which by the look of it had served Dwalin for many years. As he carried it back to the sofa he wondered why Dwalin no longer played.

He sat down and tentatively plucked the chords, wincing slightly at the dissonant sound before he patiently began turning the tuners to pull the strings in the right tune. It was a meticulous task and as he slowly tuned the guitar, string by string, he felt an odd sense of peace which was nearly as alien to him as it was welcome.

He tried a chord, then another, his hands gradually remembering the motions and a fledgling tune began to form, weaving through the fragmented melodies of songs that ebbed and flowed through his mind, until he began playing something which sounded familiar to him. Memories of a cold autumn evening in Dunland flooded him as he pressed and plucked the strings. Thorin and him sitting outside their shared tent, smoking. His brother brooding, eyes fixed on the Misty Mountains in the distance. The snow on their peaks white even in the twilight and the words tumbling out of Thorin's mouth, barely audible, but something deep within them making Frerin reach for his lute and trying a scale.

He felt the sharpness of the strings under his fingertips – it had been a lifetime since he had had the right callouses on them – and he had no doubt the skin would be raw and broken by the time he was done, but with every chord and note he felt something within him unwind and he couldn't stop.

It had been the only song they had ever composed together and the sun had set and the clear starlit night had been well underway by the time they had finished it, Frerin feeling drained as the sorrow of all they had lost had been poured into the song. But as the last notes had faded into the silence of the night, for the first time in many years, his _nadad_ had smiled at him, squeezing his shoulder and it was one on the most treasured memories of Thorin.

The mournful tune filled the living-room of Dwalin's apartment and he gradually lost himself to the music, and no thoughts, no memories burned within his mind, the world fading into the sound of grief and hope _._

  


The slow notes of an old rock song welcomed him home. Dwalin silently closed the door, loath to disturb Frerin. It had been almost a fortnight since Dwalin had returned home and heard him play for the first time in this lifetime. Dwalin had offered him to play his guitar in an attempt to banish the dead expression from his sharp-angled face, but after a week of it laying untouched he had given up hope. Still, Frerin had surprised him once again. And in the span of a few days he had taken the habit of playing Dwalin's old Fender for hours to no end, filling the usually silent apartment with the oddest array of songs as inspiration struck the former prince.

The song he was playing sounded familiar to Dwalin, but he couldn't quite put a name on it. But that didn't stop him from quietly humming in tune while he took his light jacket off, smiling, and hung it on the coat rack. He had been taking off his shoes when suddenly Barkith barked loudly and the music abruptly stopped. A moment later she was running with unrestrained joy around his feet, waggling her tail and climbing up his thigh.

“Easy, lass.” he told her and Barkith threw herself on the floor, rolling on her back until she was belly up, inviting him to scratch her.

He huffed out a laugh and bent down, digging his fingers in the fur of her chest when the sound Frerin's voice made him lift his head and meet his somewhat tired expression.

“Hi.” he said in his quiet baritone, standing in the doorway, guitar still in hand.

He was still far too thin for his height and shoulder-breadth, with Dwalin's old Led Zeppelin T-shirt hanging off him limply, but he looked healthier with each passing day and some days it was only the haunted look in his blue blue eyes that reminded Dwalin of what state Frerin had been in, barely a month before.

“I tried fixing something to eat.” Frerin told him, running his free hand on the back of his neck. “I don't know if it's edible. I've never been much of a cook...”

“You didn't have to.” he replied, an edge of surprise in his voice.

Frerin was getting better, but most of the time there was a lingering fatigue in him that had him do little more than play and spend his time with Barkith. And it was still incommensurately better than seeing him shiver under a blanket, pale as a sheet.

“It's okay. I like having something to do.” he said, looking at the floor.

“I feel... well, _useless._ ” he explained with a shrug before he hastily added “But if you don't want me to cook, it's alright.”

His eyes had lifted to meet his and there was hesitation in the tilt of his head, and the light furrow of his blond eyebrows.

“No. It's fine.” he reassured him, swallowing “Took me by surprise, is all.”

  


Dinner turned out edible enough. Frerin had cooked some pasta and they were eating it in companionable silence, Dwalin still mulling over what Frerin had told him, of how he felt useless – while he tried _not_ to think of how his oversized shirt had shifted, revealing the sharp beginning of a collarbone and he averted his eyes, looking back at his nearly empty plate with a glare.

It was normal for Frerin to feel the way he was feeling. He hadn't left Dwalin's apartment in over a month. His withdrawal had been bad and Dwalin had been happy when the worst had been over, but weeks after the sweating and vomiting had been done with Frerin had been a wraith-like presence in his apartment, barely moving from the sofa and staring blankly at the ceiling.

But there was more life to him now - even if his eyes looked tired and his fork hung limply from his long fingers. It would do him good to have something to do.

“Why don't you try walking Barkith?” he offered and Frerin blinked, looking up from his half-eaten plate of pasta with a small frown “If you want to do something useful, you could walk her.”

Frerin looked at him contemplatively for a long moment. There were of course many other things the other man could do and the fact that he wanted to, made hope flare within Dwalin, hope that he could be well. That he could go to sleep one night without having to worry whether any of it would last - without the fear of seeing his lifeless body on the stainless steel of a morgue table _._

He had been living from day to day for the past month, knowing that Frerin's attempt at staying clean was like walking on bad rock and that one wrong step could bring the whole mountain down. And that _couldn't_ be allowed to happen. He gripped his fork with too much strength and he felt the metal bend slightly. He forced himself to release his fingers, quelling the maelstrom that licked at the walls of his self-restraint. It was difficult for Dwalin, to mind his tongue, to curb the anger that tended to flare way too often – every time Frerin thrashed under the covers, whimpering, every time he looked at his thin forearms and his cheekbones and he hated whatever, _whomever_ , had broken him.

Dwalin wanted to protect him from the nightmares that had plagued his sleep for the past weeks. He wanted to see him smile the way he had used to, the large grin that had used to bring his whole face alight and it had been like staring at the sun. He wanted...

He wanted other things, perhaps, he thought darkly.

But those he had no business wanting.

Dwalin didn't know what had gotten into him, but Frerin was his former Prince, his kin, and moreover he was someone who needed his help. It was wrong to notice the golden hue of his messy hair and wonder if it would be as soft as it seemed, under his fingers – wonder how it would feel to have Frerin's hands gripping his arms the way he had done that night after he had awoken him from his nightmare. It was wrong to notice the way his tongue would dart out to wet his chapped lips and struggle _not_ to wonder. And fail.

“I can try.” he said, snapping Dwalin from his thoughts and for a long breathless moment he had no idea what Frerin was talking about, while a flush travel up his neck.

Then he recalled. Barkith. Walking. Yes.

He swallowed thickly and managed a nod, taking a generous sip of his beer. _Mahal's hammers!_

  


The horn of a car blared down the street, a piercing sound in the chaotic rumble of the traffic. He tightened his hold on Barkith's leash, trying to overcome the disorientation which had made his head spin the moment he had stepped out of Dwalin's building. The walk down the stairs had been strange enough, but the noise that had greeted him when he had stepped onto the pavement had thrown him out of balance and he had braced himself on the wall for a moment.

He blinked twice, trying to adjust his ears and getting the world back into focus. Everything seemed louder than he remembered it being. But he had spent a month and some more in the relative silence of Dwalin's apartment and this was London.

He fished out a package of cigarettes, lighting one as he peeled himself off the wall.

“Let's go.” he told Barkith and the dog followed him in his stroll down the street.

His old worn trainers walked on the damp pavement, the leather discoloured on the front. He kept his gaze on his grimy shoelaces, while he tried to get accustomed to the presence of other people – to _seeing_ other people rather than wading through the masses in a daze, the faces blurring into shapeless forms which were skin and hair and mouths that moved, but made it impossible for him discern one person from the other.

He walked slowly, noticing the people that passed him by and the clarity of his perception was nearly astounding to him. He found himself observing things he hadn't noticed in a long while, like the bright red of a telephone booth or the way the overcast sky reflected in the murky puddles on the street.

Barkith trotted happily by his side, sniffling everything on their way and he felt a strange lightness that wasn't the detachment he was accustomed to – like a severed limb which still recalled the presence of a body attached to it. No, with each passing step he felt a weightlessness envelop him. A weightlessness that felt _good._

And that was a notion that startled him just as much as it wasn't unexpected.

He inhaled the cigarette smoke, while Barkith sniffled the corner of a building. No, it wasn't unexpected. He had noticed how his body was gradually growing stronger, haler. It made all his daily tasks easier to accomplish, it made him feel almost a person. Almost something other that the _nobody_ he had been for so long. And the need, the need was a fixed point in his mind, but no longer a burning hole of cold sweat in his body.

Barkith resumed her pace and he followed her.

The past month had given him back his body, but his mind could not be changed. The sewer where all the rot descended in and descended from remained anything but light. There were leaden weights falling through the blank space of the receding numbness and nightmares plaguing his dreams – the ones that had wantonly ravished Charlie's mind since he had been a child. The ones that had poured into his consciousness and eaten what little had been left whole after that jagged blade had ripped him apart and the fray had seeped within his soul. The ones that had Dwalin wake him in the middle of the night and had made him feel a brand new shade of guilt at seeing the tired expression on his bearded face, the last vestiges of slumber wiped away from his clear blue eyes by worry.

And he hated himself for making him worry – for making him go to all the lengths he was going.

He felt like a parasite some days, living in his home, eating his food, smoking the cigarettes he got him. But he couldn't make himself leave. Dwalin wanted him around. And he wanted to be there. _He had always wanted to be there._ Before this life had been slammed into his lifeless soul, before his blood had poured painfully on the ground, he had _wanted him around._ He had wanted _him_? He hadn't been old enough to feel such a pull, hadn't been able to think such a notion, the stripling dwarf he had been. All he knew was that Frerin had treasured every moment, rare as they had been when there had been such rage within Dwalin, such need to destroy, while Frerin had only had music to offer.

And now he had nightmares.

Nightmares that were nothing but his thoughts given flesh and pouring through the tissue of his consciousness and into the raw flesh of his soul. Growing fiercer and fiercer to counterbalance the lucidity of his waking hours, the unprecedented peacefulness of those days. Days he didn't deserve, like he didn't deserve the adoration in Barkith's brown eyes, but he cherished it nonetheless, feeling something unwind inside him when his fingers would tangle in her fur and she would place her head on his thigh – the same way something tightened beneath his breastbone whenever Dwalin smiled.

Like it had always done.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one more to go... :)
> 
> Chapter title taken from “Arsonist's Lullabye” by Hozier.


	5. From the very first day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mistakes and consequences.

 

The sound of a locker closing reverberated in the empty room and Dwalin instinctively snapped his head towards the sound, before he returned his attention to his locker, shaking his head at how engrossed in his thoughts he had been if he had failed to notice he was not alone in the locker room. He felt his face twist into a scowl. He needed to get a grip of himself.

As the weeks had piled one on another and the summer heat had began turning the damp air into a suffocating haze Dwalin had found himself more and more distracted by his thoughts. He kept replaying in his mind all the small conversations he had had with Frerin during their meals - unobtrusive and polite and Dwalin knew perhaps they should be talking about important things, about their past, about Frerin's future, but he had never been good at wielding words and Frerin seemed content to not speak of those topics either.

Or he would recall the sound of Frerin's long sinewy fingers plucking the strings of his old Fender, his head bent towards the guitar and the light catching the threads of gold in his messy hair. He would think of his long thin arms which were no longer marred by yellowing bruises and scabs – and he would remember how strong his grip had been, that night, over a month before when Dwalin had first woken Frerin from a nightmare. And then he would think of the urge which had roared within him and had not ceased to pace within his chest ever since, making it hard for him to contain himself, making him want to do things which he was not entitled to want - _frustrating_ him to no end.

Dwalin felt his scowl deepen and he hastily fetched his belongings from the locker and put them in his pockets while his right hand slammed the door closed. The rattling of metal gave him a brief satisfaction, but it vanished just as fast as it had come. He was angry – with himself mostly – and he couldn't seem to find a way to quell that rage. Nor to vent it, for that part.

The sound of approaching footsteps made him turn his head once again and this time there was someone coming his way. MacKenzie emerged from behind a row of metal lockers, striding in his direction.

“Murray.” she greeted him in her thick Scottish accent and he nodded in reply “Done for today?”

“Yes.” he replied locking his locker and walking away from it.

“Good.” she said following him out of the locker room and declaring “Yer coming with me.”

His eyebrows shot up and he stopped in the middle of the corridor.

“And where am I going?” he inquired, crossing his arms over his chest and directing a glare in the red-head's direction.

“To grab a drink.” she replied, still walking towards the exit “You look like shit, might as well get shitfaced.”

“Flattering as always.” he told her dryly, resuming his stride.

“Aye, I'm the most charming woman in this station.” she deadpanned “But charming or not, yer coming with me. Come on.”

“I should go home.” he told her, thinking of Frerin and Barkith who were waiting for him at home – but also feeling the sharp edge of anger and frustration still cut him and Mahal knew he _needed_ a drink.

“Yer dog will live without you for a couple of hours.” MacKenzie rebutted waving at the officer who was sitting behind the front desk as they walked toward the glass doors of the station and Dwalin gave Abbot a terse nod as he walked by.

Dwalin didn't reply, unwilling to tell her about Frerin. He wasn't sure how she would take it – after all for her Frerin was just a junkie they had arrested a couple of months before and Dwalin hadn't forgotten the look of puzzlement she had worn when he had inquired about him the day of the raid only to be told he had been released.

He walked through the doors, still trying to decide what to do. The air outside was warm and the late afternoon sun was piercing through the clouds, bathing the street in a hazy white light. It was early enough to get back home in time for dinner if he chose to take MacKenzie upon her offer.

She had stopped on the pavement, looking at him expectantly, a hand propped on her hip and Dwalin heaved a sigh.

“Fine.” he told the red-head “One drink, though.”

  
  


Five glasses of whiskey and several pints of beer later Dwalin realised it was getting late and he _should_ be heading back home, but MacKenzie was roaring with laughter at something the curvy blonde who was sitting near her said - and the woman's hair colour was almost the same shade of gold as Frerin's.

Frerin who was waiting for him at home, wearing Dwalin's overly large hand-me-down clothes that flattered his willowy body more than they should – or perhaps it was him noticing this things when it was not his place to. He nearly groaned as his mind supplied him with visions of pale skin and sharp bones sticking out of the neck of a T-shirt, and Dwalin gulped down the rest of the beer waving at the waiter for a refill.

There was heat pooling inside him and going home would be the most wrong thing he could do – because he _wanted_ to, he wanted to see him, to have him around. But he also wanted him _close_ , close enough to touch.

And that was something he couldn't... shouldn't... _do?_ _want?_

He knew what it was that he _wanted_ – he wasn't drunk enough to forget it and yet his inhibitions were low enough that _did_ admit it to himself – but what he wanted was _wrong_. And yet there was no denying the frustration that burned within him, hacking its way to the forefront of his mind. It had been a long time since he had felt the need to indulge in that kind of companionship – and never so fiercely, so blindingly aching. But Frerin was unattainable and Dwalin knew it even if the most primal part of him refused to contemplate the notion. And he would have to keep his thoughts, his _urges_ to himself. Or vent them otherwise – not that he hadn't, and it was shameful to admit it to himself, but what happened in the silence of his bedroom was his burden alone.

He scowled, trying to fight his way out of that chain of thoughts, but frustration was boiling within him and it dangerously mingled with anger. He noticed the waiter moving towards their booth and Dwalin took his wallet out. But the waiter merely shook his head while he placed his drink on the table.

“It's already paid.” he told him, looking in the direction of the counter.

Dwalin frowned as his eyes followed the trajectory, landing on a dark-haired lad - he couldn't have been more than a few years younger than him. He was looking back at Dwalin with a small smirk on his clean-shaven face. He was handsome enough and a few months before Dwalin wouldn't have thought twice about it. But he didn't want _him_. No, he didn't want black hair and tanned skin, he wanted Frerin's sky-blue eyes, his pale fingers clutching at him. He wanted to kiss that collarbone that would sometimes stick out of the neck of his T-shirt, he wanted to capture those thin lips with his own and bury his hands in his golden hair.

But he couldn't and wouldn't. And there was something about the brunet's posture, about the challenge in his eyes that pulled at the scorching frustration that coursed through Dwalin - and he damned himself, but Frerin was unattainable.

He nodded.

  
  


The mug of tea was scorchingly hot in his hands, but he relished the warmth seeping through his fingers. It felt grounding. He had woken that morning with the last tendrils of his nightmares still clinging at him and his body had felt more worn that he had been feeling in weeks. Barkith had been eyeing him with concern, licking his hand until he had risen from the sofa with a groan. The sun had been already up and he had wondered why Dwalin hadn't woken him in the middle of the night like he usually did. Ever since his nightmares had taken hold of his subconsciousness once again, the erstwhile dwarf had always managed to shake him out of his tortured reveries to the point he felt an overwhelming guilt for interrupting Dwalin's sleep so often.

But tonight Dwalin hadn't been there and in spite of his lingering guilt he hadn't been able to shake the stab of disappointment that had stitched itself seamlessly with the poisonous mixture of angst and disgust which had been corroding his sleepy mind and still burned through his thoughts, choking him with the fumes of contorted images, of words that pooled under his skin begging for the holes to drain them out, aching for the silvery gleam of a thin needle and the sharp prickle of pain before the rush washed everything away like a rip tide.

He lifted the mug to his lips, taking a sip of the unsweetened hot tea and the trail of fire down his throat pulled his mind back to the present, casting a veil of fine mist between his tortured thoughts and the light filtering through the kitchen window. The sound of the bedroom's door opening made him lift his head and he listened to Dwalin's heavy footsteps moving through the hallway. He put down his mug and set to brewing the black coffee the other man favoured.

The smell of coffee had begun filling the kitchen when Dwalin's bulky figure appeared in the doorway. Dwalin winced at the sunlight and he noticed the former warrior looked distinctly hungover. Well, that explained his absence, he reasoned while he poured the coffee in Dwalin's usual mug.

“Mornin'.” Dwalin croaked and despite himself, and the echo of his nightmares inside his head, he felt his lips quirk upwards. Dwalin truly looked worse for wear.

“Rough night?” he asked, marvelling at the teasing tone of his own voice, but there was a lightness than only Dwalin managed to inspire, a need to see him smile that defied all the thick molasses of revulsion for himself which usually clogged his perception.

He handed him the mug and Dwalin nodded in reply, his fingers closing around the porcelain.

“Thanks.” he grunted, taking a sip.

Dwalin pulled out a chair and sat down heavily, nursing the coffee with one hand while the other rubbed at his temple. He was about to turn around and start fixing them breakfast – as edible as it would be, considering his abysmal cooking skills – when Dwalin lowered his head on the kitchen table and the chuckle that was about to burst from his lips died in his throat.

He blinked twice, but it was still there. On the juncture of Dwalin's left shoulder and neck an angry red mark stuck out from the neck of the his crumpled T-shirt. His eyes trailed the bruising expanse of skin, and he didn't have to wonder what it was. Or how it must have _got_ there - how had a _bite-mark_ got on Dwalin's neck. His hands clenched on his sides while his eyebrows furrowed. He felt an almost alien tide of something that was unmistakeably – and yet _impossibly –_ anger build within him and he gaped, not understanding his own reaction.

It shouldn't matter to him what Dwalin did - _whom_ he did it with. It truly shouldn't. But it _did._

The sight of it made something within him growl and the sharp twist of his stomach as it plummeted through his gut, smashing everything on its way made him shake his head at his own reaction. He didn't understand. Or maybe he did, but he didn't want to – not like that. It wasn't the way he wanted his epiphanies to come – but had there ever been a choice for him, had there ever been mercy? He should have known the peace would not last. He should have known sooner or later something would speed like a meteor through his chest, ripping him apart once again and setting loose all the voices, all the bony fingers that picked at his brain matter.

He looked at the bite-mark on Dwalin's neck and he realised something he had always known, something that had always been there, throughout both his lifetimes. And what better way to realise it - he mused idly, feeling disconnected from himself in an alienating moment of clarity – what better way to do so than when his heart shattered into a million shrapnel which continued to rip their way through his flesh.

“Frerin?” Dwalin's head had lifted from the table and he was eyeing him with a groggy look of concern.

He swallowed thickly, suddenly needing to _get out_ of there, to be anywhere where Dwalin wasn't. Because he couldn't look at that angry mark and think someone had been close enough to put it there, someone's lips had probably kissed that expanse of skin before the teeth had sunk into it. And his brain, that wretched thing, found it fit to supply with more images, with hands that roamed, nails that scratched, limbs that tangled as moans and gasps reverberated in the vault of his skull.

He fled the kitchen without a backward glance. And he heard the sound of Dwalin's voice thick with worry, calling him, asking him what was wrong, but he couldn't... _he couldn't..._ He yanked the bathroom door with too much force, slamming it shut a moment later and sliding down to the floor. The voices, the sounds, the memories, the fantasies all twirled and sneered in a horrible danse macabre of rotten flesh and broken bones, and his hands went instinctively to his ears, to _stop_ the voices. But like every voice inside his mind nothing would smother them, no amount of effort. The more he tried the louder they got. His fingers dug into the palms of his hands but the pain could not distract him from the derailing of his thoughts. Nothing could.

They were like the nimble fingers bony fingers of Pandora and inch by inch the latch of his thoughts was lifted. And the voices suddenly spilled like an avalanche of mud through his consciousness, dissonantly joining the choir with all their malice, their honesty, their sharp cutting ripping precision with which they chipped away bit by bit everything that he had precariously built in the past two months. Every moment of peace was suddenly being painfully twisted under the spectrum of disgust, like a joint turned until the grinding of bone and tendon forebode its breaking. And he found himself pressing harder and harder his fists, nails digging into flesh, knuckles pressing onto his skull, but no amount of pressure would banish the thoughts away. Nothing could.

_Nothing but a fix._

Dwalin rapped on the door twice, wincing at the sharp pain that erupted in his temples. He _had_ truly drunk too much the night before. His whole body felt wrung out, dry – but the worst were the shame and guilt that had pooled at the bottom of his stomach, heavy like boulders. It had seemed reasonable, the night before. It had seemed like an easy way out of the confines of the frustration which had been welling inside him. But when he had seen Frerin standing in the kitchen, handing him a mug of freshly brewed coffee, Dwalin had felt disgusted with himself.

“Frerin?” he called, knocking on the door again, but Frerin wasn't answering and he felt his worry increase tenfold. “Are you alright?”

He hadn't liked the unreadable expression of Frerin's face when he had lifted his head and his flight had banished all the sleepiness from his limbs and mind. Something was wrong. But Frerin wasn't answering and his instincts screamed at him to stop lingering and just get inside that bathroom, but at the same time he respected Frerin's choices.

“I'm coming in.” he declared before turning the doorknob and pushing the door. It opened a hairbreadth but no more and it took Dwalin a moment to realise the other man was sitting on the floor, with his back to the door.

He didn't want to push further, afraid to hurt him, but he was even more afraid of what was going on. Was he alright? Had something happened? Worry ate at him in ravenous bites as he tried to push the door open as gently as he could. When the space between the door-frame and the door itself was wide enough for him to sneak through he pushed his hand in the fissure, switching the light on before he pushed his body inside the bathroom.

Frerin was sitting curled upon himself, hands pressed bruisingly against his head which he kept shaking. His eyes were closed underneath his furrowed brow. He didn't seem to notice his presence.

“Frerin?” he called, but got no reaction from the blond other than his knees drawing closer to his chest and Dwalin reached out tentatively, clueless at what to do and feeling horribly lost but at the same time knowing that something had to be done.

He knelt in front of Frerin and touched his elbow gingerly, calling out his name. His eyes snapped open wide, looking at Dwalin with an expression that reminded him of that first evening when he had found him smoking under the rain. There was the same sheer disbelief in his deep blue orbs and the same feverish glint that made a sudden frost settle in Dwalin's chest.

No.

He had been doing so well, he had been getting better with each passing day and Dwalin had dared dreaming he would be just _fine_ given enough time. But the look in his eyes told him otherwise. It was a look that begged for release. And that was something Dwalin couldn't give him.

“You need a fix.” it wasn't a question and he heard the chill in his own voice, but he couldn't help it.

“I need peace.” was Frerin's reply as he hung his head, unconsciously leaning into Dwalin's hand and even if it was the hardest thing he had ever done – his heart was hammering fast fast faster within his chest but he ignored it - he reached out with his other hand and pulled Frerin in an embrace. And he bottled up all his desires, all his longing, striving to give his former prince the comfort he needed.

Frerin leaned into it, his own hands slowly coming down from his head to clutch at the fabric of Dwalin's shirt as he deepened the embrace until his blond head was buried in his shoulder.

“I'm sorry.” his voice was nearly a whisper “I... I _can't_. It's all _too much_.”

And Dwalin's heart was close to breaking as he cradled him against his chest. Because that was exactly where he wanted him. But not like that. Not falling apart on the bathroom floor, clinging to Frerin for dear life because Dwalin knew if he let go of him the other man would be irreparably lost.

And he couldn't, he couldn't let that happen.

“I don't want to lose you.” he admitted softly, his face buried in Frerin's hair “Not again.”

Frerin didn't reply for the longest time and Dwalin held him, memorising every bone, every joint under his hands. Slowly he felt Frerin's fingers begin to uncurl from the fabric of his T-shirt but he wasn't letting go. His grip remained firm, his arms holding them close and gradually he shifted, lifting his head until his blue eyes were gazing at his openly.

And Dwalin wouldn't have been able to break away from that gaze even it he had wanted to. There was something in those blue depths that Dwalin couldn't name, but it shone on their forefront, overshadowing all the pain and trouble that still clung to the edge of Frerin's gaze. Something that made his breath hitch. Frerin's voice was quiet when he spoke. Quiet and torn between hope and resignation.

“I love you Dwalin.” he said, not breaking his gaze and Dwalin could do nothing but stare, swallowing “I think I always have.”

And for the longest moment Dwalin could hear just the sound of his heartbeats reverberating loudly in his ears. He _loved_ him? Dwalin felt his heart threaten to burst as everything inside him sung. He loved _him_? Suddenly there were no thoughts when he leaned forward, breathing

“I am such a fool.”

And he pressed his lips against Frerin's with everything that roared within his chest, with all the weeks spent admiring him and denying himself the privilege of dreaming, with all the decades, all the centuries spent wondering how it would have been if Frerin had been there, wondering if he could have saved him, aching for the wideness of his smile, for the sound of the music that flowed out of him and through his fingers, for the sight of his golden hair gleaming in the sunlight.

He kissed him and there was nothing but the softness of his thin lips, which were here and now - and he _loved_ him, he loved him, impossible as it may seem, Frerin loved him - and the soft gasp of surprise before Frerin's own lips responded and his arms grew tighter against him. And Dwalin was drowning but it was the most beautiful breathlessness.

And when they drew apart it was only for their foreheads to touch.

Like they had always meant to be there.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so ends the most angsty piece I have ever written...  
> But I was wondering if you guys would like me to expand it a bit. I meant to finish where I did, it with a hopeful ending, but I /could/ continue it, delving into the beginning of their relationship, and maybe resolving an issue or two along the way. That is if you're interested in reading that. 
> 
> For now I'll mark this fic as complete, but do let me know your thoughts, both positive and negative.
> 
> That being said, I give the most heartfelt thanks to all those who have commented/reviewed or otherwise shown their support. You have my endless love and devotion. :)
> 
> Chapter title taken from “Slow It Down” by Amy Macdonald.


	6. It's about you and the sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Always and now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since the will of the people is such, this story is being expanded (if just a bit). :) I love you guys, your comments make my day and make writing worthwhile.

His heartbeats drummed loudly within his chest. The chill of the bathroom tiles he was sitting on vanished in the overwhelming warmth that were Dwalin's arms around him. And there was silence. There was _silence._ He felt utterly lost, in a way he had never experienced before. It was not the annihilation of the rush nor the emptiness of the aftermath. No, it was the breathless knowledge of being where he belonged and at the same time disappearing in that knowledge like a shadow melting into the darkness of a starless night - of a chamber deep underground. But it was comfort and it was safe. And it was silent.

As Dwalin's fingers kneaded through his hair and his warm forehead rested against his own, their breaths mingling, his mind quieted down and the words that usually sped through him in trails of blazing fire were dead behind sealed phantom lips.

Slowly Dwalin's head moved and he looked at him with his pale blue eyes wide and disbelieving. But blissful. His breath hitched in his throat.

“Frerin.” he breathed in that deep rumbling voice of his and he wanted to tell Dwalin that Frerin was dead, gone just like Charlie had been for many years, but the words tangled in his windpipe and would not unravel.

He was a dead man walking still, against all odds. But the tightness beneath his breastbone and the thundering of his heart were alive and old, older that this wretched body was. They had followed him through death and unbeing, deeply etched within the webbing of his soul, tightly wrapped against the marrow of his very being. Because Frerin had _loved_ Dwalin. He had loved him before he had been able to understand what the warmth that flowed through his chest had been - _was._ He loved Dwalin. He loved him. With the same lack of reserve, with his whole mismatched self, with every inch of himself.

And while Frerin's body was dust and nothing, dead and beyond memory, _this_ had endured, this had been Frerin's. It had _been_ Frerin. It was him.

He swallowed dryly while he tried to understand the ripples of thought that threatened to drown him in his mind's inability to fathom something so greater than himself, the impossibility of being without being, of existing like a phantom and yet feeling the blood pump within his body, loudly shouting with each rapid heartbeat that this was the only place he had ever needed to be, this was the only way he could _be._ That this was him and he _was._ He was _Frerin._

He blinked and something in his eyes must had betrayed the overwhelming maelstrom of thoughts, because Dwalin's hand rose to his cheek, while his thick eyebrows furrowed slightly, a tinge of worry corrupting the joy in his eyes. And Frerin – he was Frerin, _he was Frerin_ – shook his head before pressing his lips to Dwalin's and forgetting for the briefest while to even breathe.

When they broke apart Dwalin looked at him in sheer wonder and his – Frerin's – breaths refused to leave his windpipe, but it was the breathlessness of the most precious of memories being carved into the fabric of his mind, and he knew should the world end he would never forget the slight widening of Dwalin's moonstone eyes and the small disbelieving smile curving his lips beneath his brown beard, nor the warmth of Dwalin's large, calloused palm against his unshaven cheek.

Slowly the hand slipped off his face and Dwalin began to rise, offering that same hand to him and Frerin took it, still feeling the ghost of that touch against his skin.

  


It was surreal, he mused, leaning against the door-frame, listening to Frerin play his guitar with a small smile on his thin lips and his eyes closed while his fingers moved up and down the neck, deftly hammering out the right chords without looking. It was surreal to gaze at his former prince, caught in the grasp of music and remembering how bony his shoulders had been under Dwalin's palms and how soft his messy blond hair had been when he had combed through it with his fingers. Kissing him.

His heartbeats pounded loudly within his chest, with the marching pace of an army rallying and he felt a silly grin form on his lips while he observed the way Frerin's head bobbed in rhythm with the blues he was playing, while Barkith sat at his feet, chewing a toy. Dwalin truly couldn't believe he was standing there and Frerin - who was sitting a few feet away from him - had leaned against him less than half an hour before, kissing him with little restraint. That it had been only three days since Dwalin had been grovelling at the feet of his frustration – and Frerin had not mentioned anything, even though Dwalin had seen him eye the bite-mark he had belatedly realised he had been sporting with his lips pressed tightly. And the quiet acceptance had made him feel more guilty for his own foolishness that any biting remark might had made him.

But Frerin had always bottled up everything that was not the joy which had used to seep through him like a vein of mithril – and the shy echo of his unrestrained enthusiasm his former self had sported, and which danced sometimes in his eyes, barely visible in the blue depth of his eyes, made Dwalin's heart beat all the faster. With hope.

He could not believe it, he truly couldn't. And yet Frerin had said it plainly. He held his heart. Always he had said, always, and Dwalin's heart had threatened to burst right through his breast because it was true. It had always been like that. It had taken him far too long to realise it, but standing there leaning against the door-frame of his living-room Dwalin knew he had been lost long before he had even had been able to comprehend the notion of losing oneself.

He had been lost to the cheerful smile and wide-eyes which had gazed at the world as if every stone and pebble had been the miracle of creation itself. He had been lost to the sunlight weaving in his golden curls ever escaping the braids Princess Ásdis would dutifully put there every morning, shaking her equally blond head grimly and asking Frerin why couldn't he be like his brother, why couldn't he be more like Thorin. And those many times Dwalin had heard the older dwarrowdam scold her younger son for being his wonderful self Dwalin had always wanted to tell the Princess she was wrong. Because how could Frerin be anything but perfect?

Dwalin had not thought much of it in the centuries that had wedged themselves between the then and the now, but looking at the frail perfection of the man who was sitting on his sofa, caressing the strings with his thin strong fingers, he understood the always and the forever, and the tale his mother had used to tell him in the short few years she had been around, of souls always finding one another. Of love.

Because he knew he loved Frerin. The more he thought about it – and how strange it was to muse idly for him, how utterly unfamiliar and yet he could spend the rest of his days pondering Frerin and he would not regret it – the stronger his knowledge grew. He realised every single word Frerin had uttered had been mirrored within Dwalin's heart. He had always loved him.

But he had been too foolish to see.

But no more. No, no more. He had kissed those seldom smiling lips and he had held him against his chest, feeling him breathe, feeling the pumping of his heart and knowing that the world would never be as complete as when he had his Prince between his arms. And Frerin smiled like he was doing now, the song having trailed to its end without Dwalin noticing. His blue eyes were dancing in amusement.

“I never pegged you as the brooding type.” he teased lightly, always hesitant, always holding back and Dwalin wondered what he was afraid of.

“I was thinking.” he rebutted gruffly, crossing his arms across his chest but he was sure the grin he sported spoiled the impression of irritation.

He walked towards the sofa and Frerin put the guitar down on the coffee table, careful not to scratch it. More careful than Dwalin had been in the years he had used it, before his job had taken away any wish to play – and he had acquired a stash of liquor.

“You're brooding now, though.” Frerin said with a small smirk and he huffed a chuckle shaking his head.

Suddenly Frerin kissed him and it was all the encouragement he needed. His hands rose to circle him on their own accord, while Frerin's hands clutched at his shoulders, pulling him closer. And they tethered between the gentleness of that always and the roughness of the now with that need which Dwalin had shoved aside in the wake of his epiphany, in the immaculate amazement of being able to touch Frerin. And he wanted to _touch._

Frerin's head inclined slightly and the kiss deepened and his bony fingers dug deeper in Dwalin's shoulders and the scales began to tip, while heat began to pool within him. And it was a blazing forge, a crucible filling inside him with the molten iron of _need_ and the desire to touch every inch of that thin body which was pressing itself against him.

“I love you.” he breathed when the kiss broke and Frerin looked at him wide-eyed for the longest moment.

And then he kissed him back with more force, getting as close to him as he could, pushing Dwalin down on his back. His hands trailed down his arms, gripping him strongly and Dwalin felt a low growl build within him. He felt his restraint begin to fray, growing thinner and feebler with every single kiss, with every inch of him that Frerin's hands touched, with every jutting bone Dwalin's hands found as they made their way down Frerin's back, while he clutched at Dwalin as if he was holding onto him for dear life.

Drawing away from that kiss took all his willpower but he managed a breathed

“Frerin.” unable to form a coherent sentence

“Please.” Frerin replied, cheeks flushed and blue eyes dark.

He leaned back to capture his lips, but Dwalin shook his head, breathing heavily

“Not here, though.” he croaked.

Frerin nodded.

  


The front door closed. Frerin – how queer it was to refer to himself with that name once again and yet strangely right - he put the kitchen rag down on the counter and sighed loudly. Everything, his whole perception of the world had been oddly muffled in the past week. While his mind got clearer day after day, Dwalin's presence - and his gruff grins and the all too gentle caresses for someone who had two lifetimes of memories inked into the skin of his back and torso – he had banished all thoughts in the most silent corner of Frerin's mind, taking over all his senses and making Frerin's heart race in a way no one, _nothing,_ had ever made it act so. It was bliss undeserved and overwhelming, and he had felt such a happiness, such a joy which he still was unable to fathom.

But in the silence the voices still lurked, hissing, cursing, spitting, trying to cut their way to his consciousness. Voices and faces which hovered in his mind's eye and Frerin wondered if the unrestrained bliss of Dwalin's presence – of Dwalin's _love –_ was nothing but a delusion, a shroud of joy placed there to cover the rot which festered underneath his skin – which only needle-holes had been able to drain, but no, no, he _couldn't_ think about them, not when Dwalin's voice had been frost at the thought that Frerin might need a fix. He couldn't think about _that_. It didn't matter if he was never going to stop needing it. It didn't matter if one day the dike was going to break and he and his mind would be flooded and there would be just the distant glint of a needle-point in the horizon. It _didn't matter._

It didn't matter because it was real. Because Dwalin was real. Unlike the echoes of voices within his mind, the faces that belonged to the dust of memories, the jagged truths that made him still bleed, deeply shoved within his mind, unlike them all, Dwalin was real. He was here, walking down the street on his way to work. Dwalin was real. It was all real.

He had felt it in the racing of his heart and the humming of its beats as they had coursed through his body, reverberating in his ears within a symphony of almost inaudible sighs and Dwalin's rumbling voice, rough and yet so profoundly gentle. He had seen it in the widening of his pupils, large within the pale circle of his grey-blue irises and the grin which Dwalin's beard had not been able to hide. He knew it was real because nothing had ever felt so real as gasping out his name while the world had exploded within him and they had been one.

Frerin took a deep breath, feeling a flush redden his cheeks and he tried not to think of the way Dwalin's fingers had trailed fire on his skin. Of how utterly bare had been his soul, sprawled there on Dwalin's bed and he had touched him with the same reverence he had used to play his viol with, even when a deeper need had blazed in his eyes, spilling out ember after ember until they had been both engulfed by flames and the world had reduced to the singing of their bodies and their souls. Together.

He swallowed, opening the tap and splashing some cold water on his face. He did not bother wiping it, letting the droplets trail down his face and into the collar of his T-shirt. Everything was somewhat out of joint in its rightness and he felt like he was floating dangerously high. Dangerously close to losing his grasp on the thin thread of reality he had been haphazardly holding for the past weeks.

And it scared him.

Not a deep gut-wrenching fear like standing in the middle of a battlefield, frozen with a blade hanging limply in his hand. No, not that fear – painfully familiar as it was. No, it was a different kind of fear, sharply wedged inside the cracks of his mind - but a fear nonetheless.

The fear that what Dwalin had interrupted with his kiss that morning on the bathroom floor had been just put on hold, the avalanche that had nearly slid down the glacier of his thoughts and memories, burying him alive - until his breaths stopped, crushed by the frozen weight of all he was unable to carry.

The fear that it was all temporary and that his mind would plummet through him in trail of broken bones and sinew and he would choke on his own vomit in a dingy basement somewhere, a needle stuck inside his forearm. Like many had done before him. _Like a part of him_ _wanted._

And the gut-wrenching fear of what it would do to Dwalin.

But he was cracked clean through, what could he do?

  


Dwalin was weary beyond reckoning and his lip stung where that scrawny lad he had arrested earlier that afternoon had landed a lucky punch. Just the one, before Dwalin had knocked him off his feet with a growl that had had MacKenzie snap her head at him in momentary apprehension. He had cuffed him with barely concealed rage – mostly against himself, because the underfed little junkie wouldn't have got close enough to him if he hadn't been distracted. And the truth was Dwalin was distracted most the time these days.

Distraction could be a one-time luxury in his line of work, though. It was what got cops killed. The Williams lad had barely made it alive after the bullet he had taken in his thigh, a couple of months before during a raid gone bad. And they had been paying attention. While Dwalin had acted like a green lad on his first arrest.

And yet Dwalin couldn't find it in himself to stop thinking about Frerin, to be unhappy his mind found the oddest paths leading to him. Always leading back to him and his small smiles and the way his blue eyes would widen when he found the right tune on the guitar or when Barkith decided she was done with begging for a scratch and she just jumped on his lap, never mind she was almost half of Frerin's weight. He felt his lips curl in to a smile as he thought about how fond had his dog become of Frerin.

A smile that lived for the briefest of instants before the wince he stifled made him scowl once again and Dwalin turned the doorknob, walking into his apartment with a stride. He dropped the keys back into his pocket and greeted Barkith, who was waggling her tail with her usual enthusiasm. She licked his hand profusely, aiming for his face, but he glowered at the dog, saving his beard before Barkith had her way.

“Easy there, lassie.” he told her. “Where's Frerin, eh?”

The dog continued waggling her tail in response and hurrying to the kitchen where Frerin was sitting at the table, chin propped on his hands and a frown of concentration on his brow that eerily reminded him of Thorin.

“You're goin' to glare a hole on that wall.” he said in lieu of a greeting and Frerin's whole face lit up, even if the smallest hint of a frown remained on his forehead.

Which deepened when his blue eyes locked on the swollen corner of Dwalin's lip.

“What happened?” he asked quietly, getting up from his seat, his fingers hovering near his face, but not touching the bruising patch of skin.

“Just a little prick I arrested.” he replied “Would have walked, that one, couldn't even charge him with possession. But now he's got an assault charge. So I'm not complaining.”

“You should put some ice on it.” Frerin replied, taking a kitchen rag and filling it with ice cubes.

Dwalin duly took the proffered bundle, pressing it to his face, while Frerin opened the kitchen window, fishing out a cigarette from his package and lighting it.

He smoked with a grim set to his lips and Dwalin noticed the almost compulsive way he flicked the ash off.

“It's just a scratch.” he told Frerin to reassure him, but the latter just shook his head.

“It's not that.” he told him, taking a drag of smoke and breathing it out of the window.

He sighed before turning his head towards him, with a serious expression on his face.

“I've been thinking. I... I need to change something.” he said with quiet determination “It's all so... so fucking surreal.”

Dwalin swallowed, feeling an irrational stab of paralysing fear.

“And what do you want to change?” he asked flatly and Frerin sighed, looking at the burning tip of his cigarette.

Then he lifted his eyes and met Dwalin's.

“I think I should get a job.” 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part IV of the Souls series should (hopefully) be up in the next few days, so stay tuned.
> 
> Chapter title taken from “What Else Is There?” by Röyksopp.


	7. Told many times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer and the memories. And doubts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise most contritely! Between the Secret Lesbians Kiliel Week on tumblr (you can read the results [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4789265/chapters/10959875) in case you are interested, and yes, it's shameless self-promotion XD ), the nasty cold I had come down with and the Johnlock hell I had been trapped in the for past week I had been unable to write anything decent, which is utterly unforgivable. :/  
> Any way, this was supposed to be the last chapter of this fic, but Frerin chose to be more angsty that usual and it was getting longish, so there will be one chapter more to wrap things up. 
> 
> I hope this update will be worth the long wait. :)

 

The late afternoon was hot and sticky, with large thunderclouds pressing ominously above them in twirls of coal grey amongst the leaden gloom of the summer storm which had been brewing for most of the day but had yet to pour any rain. Dwalin was striding purposefully by his side, long legs crossing the length of the street with a gait that bespoke of years on the force and decades – centuries even – of long marches in his past life. Frerin looked to his right, taking in the sight of his large shoulders, squared in their default stance and smiled. He knew most found it intimidating but to him it was a promise of warm arms that would engulf him, strong limbs that would shield him for a brief while from all the jagged edges of his thoughts – from the fray within his mind.

He felt Dwalin's knuckles brush against his own in the movement and the longing to just grab his hand, lacing their fingers together – and never letting go – pooled warmly under his pumping heart. But he hesitated, an ache that was nothing but doubt spreading like an undercurrent. Frerin didn't know if he should, if Dwalin would want him to publicly display what coiled within him, seeping through every hole in his soul and streaming through his veins. He didn't know if the softness in Dwalin's gaze was something that could withstand the judging gaze of the London summertime sunlight. In the fortnight that had passed since that morning when the universe had shifted him off a path and onto an entirely unexpected one they had never been outside the safe confines of their apartment...

 _Their_ apartment?

Frerin started. Dwalin's home, Dwalin's apartment, he thought of it as _theirs_? When had _that_ happened? Frerin glanced up from the pavement he had been staring at, all his previous worries suddenly forgotten in the wake of this overwhelming thoughts. He shook his head, marvelling in a moment of sudden clarity at how much things had changed. There was a _them_ to begin with. It was incredible to even begin contemplating. All of it. Dwalin, his words, the unspoken breadth of the emotions in his touches, _being_ there, walking though the London streets and into the unknown.

Their knuckles brushed again and Dwalin's hand slipped around his own, strong fingers twining with his bony ones and Frerin felt his breath hitch inside his chest while he squeezed his hand. He glanced in Dwalin's direction, wide-eyed in the dispelling of his doubts and he saw Dwalin staring ahead with a crease of concentration between his thick brown brows even as a small smile curved the corner of his lips. His heart was beating victoriously inside his chest and he felt his own lips pull into a smile that bordered on a grin. He turned his eyes back on the street, not really seeing it, not really noticing anything other than Dwalin's warm palm as they kept walking.

After a while Frerin began to wonder once again, where were they going. The erstwhile dwarf had not told him a word of it, merely giving him a small cryptic smile which had matched the

“You'll see.” he had uttered, motioning him to follow him.

And Frerin had done so.

They turned another angle. Frerin was pondering whether to inquire once again, even though he knew Dwalin would not budge - stubborn as he was and stalwart in his determination – when the latter suddenly veered right, stopping in front of a shop. There were several guitars and ukuleles hanging on display in the window and Frerin's eyebrows knitted in bemusement just as Dwalin pushed the glass door open, stepping inside the blissfully air-conditioned room, with the chiming of the small bell which hung above the door.

Frerin followed him inside. Dwalin moved towards the counter while Frerin's gaze captured by the tiles on the floor and try as he might he was unable to stop the flood of memories that the sight of the dove grey tiles with their dark violet floral pattern summoned. He could hear Dwalin's footsteps and the rumble of his voice as he greeted someone, but Frerin's mind was all of a sudden in Miss Harper's kitchen, small and bereft of all light but for a solitary lamp which had drawn dark shadows in his old nanny's wrinkled face. She had been worried for him, berating him for having fled the place Charlie had called home - _broken, desperate, dead inside –_ but at the same time she had not denied him that small cot in her guest room, nor her gentle embraces full of a fondness Charlie had forgotten and Frerin all the more.

He exhaled trying to grasp reality, but the memories of the small terrace house with the brown-painted door were unyielding. For five days he had stayed there and brief as it had been, it had been bliss. Staying with her amongst doilies and porcelain tea-cups, swallowing the gentle voice which had hummed him lullabies when Charlie had been just a small shivering child, terrified of the horrors which had been burned on the back of his eyelids, and for the shortest while Charlie had been able to pretend all could be well even if he had always known nothing would ever be right, nothing. He was wrong, his shattered soul patched back wrongly, dissonant. But for five days Charlie had sipped the kind brown-eyed lady's sherry and eaten her scones, even though he had known his old nanny could only host him for so much. Then, one morning he had taken his leave, pressing a kiss on her soft wrinkled forehead, a kiss which had wished to be a promise – _I'll visit as soon as I can -_ but had been a farewell in the end. Because Charlie was gone and an old obituary had informed him years later that Miss Harper had died in her sleep. Alone - like he had been, utterly alone and lost. The last – the _only –_ person who had never demanded anything of him had been gone.

He had almost followed her that night when he had read the obituary, shooting much, _too much_ into his crumbling veins. And a part of him had almost wished he had. It always would.

Dwalin's sudden laughter broke him from his reverie, tearing away the shroud of his memories and casting him back in the cool air of the shop with the faint buzzing of the air-conditioner in the background. Frerin lifted his eyes from the floor, his head a leaden weight – and looked at the poster-covered counter ahead where Dwalin was talking to a man in his late thirties whose long greying hair had been tied in a messy ponytail. There was the faint outline of wrinkles on the corners of his mouth and his slightly bloodshot eyes spoke of sleepless nights and indulgence in lighter poisons than the ones he had preferred. He moved towards them.

“Toby, this is Charles.” Dwalin introduced him to the man behind the counter and Frerin blinked, snapping his head in Dwalin's direction while the last tendrils of his memories choked him as the voices inside his head suddenly screamed bloody rage– he _wasn't_ Charlie! Charlie had been gone, gone, gone, _you're dead to me, do you hear me?!_ The phantom imprint of a fist ghosted on his left cheekbone. _You are not my son!_ And the anguished cry of Charlie's mother as a perfectly polished boot had connected to his midriff and his bloodied mouth had kissed the Persian rug on the parlour floor. _Get out of my sight!_

“So, Jim here tells me you know your way around a guitar?” a voice spoke and it was not pouring form the cracks within his skull, no it was in front of him and Frerin struggled to extricate himself from the worst the worst the worst memories of Charlie's life.

He swallowed thickly, pushing with all his might the roaring voices which screamed within his mind, reminding him of things which he wanted gone, gone, like Charlie was gone, dead to the world – and he shook the hand the man – Toby – had extended, managing a nod in answer to the question a part of his mind had understood while the other still lay on the parlour floor of Charlie's home, loathing himself as much as he had been loathed. And then the words trickled through and a frown creased on his forehead. Why had this man asked him about his skills with music?

Even as the question gave birth to another until an endless array of wondering filled his conscious mind, freeing him from the burden of the past for the time being, Toby pushed himself off the chair, walking towards the wall where many instruments where placed against, mostly guitars, and gesturing for Frerin to follow him.

“I've always liked electric ones better.” Toby said, taking gingerly an Ibanez from his hands and showing it to Frerin “But you're more the classical type I'd wager.”

“Acoustic, really.” Frerin replied, finding his voice, even as it sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else “I prefer metal strings.”

Toby nodded and began chattering on types of strings, gesturing towards the various guitars which were on display, while Dwalin leaned against the counter, observing them. Frerin was looking at the electric guitar which Toby had been showing him, with a shine of appreciation in his eyes that almost hid the white panic which had flashed over his face only minutes prior when Dwalin had introduced him to his old acquaintance. He didn't pretend to understand the reason for such a reaction and he wondered if Frerin would tell him.

He exhaled. Unless he asked he would never know. But now was not the moment, he knew and he did his best to push his concern away. Frerin and Toby had moved towards the acoustic instruments and the former was leaning with his head towards a guitar Toby had extended, tentatively passing his fingers on the strings, only to curl his lip in displeasure, and he proceeded to turn the uppermost key to tune it. Dwalin huffed a small chuckle. The string had been _almost_ perfectly in tune – Dwalin himself would have not bothered, playing all the same – but Frerin heard the difference and it bothered the streak of perfectionism he had when it came to music.

As the chuckle died down, Dwalin found himself smiling at the look of concentration on the blond's face. It was good to see Frerin outside their apartment. To see him healthy and as well as he could be after the nightmare-riddled nights he had more often than not and the pained expression that would sometimes cross his face out of the blue. Seeing him nod his head and discuss with the music shop's owner about power chords and arpeggios filled Dwalin with hope.

He was happy Frerin had suggested to find himself a job. Spending all of his days locked inside their home would have done him more harm than good in the long run and Dwalin had liked the idea instantly. But it had taken him many days to figure out a solution. Then, one night, very late – or very early - he had been getting back from the night shift and he had walked past Toby's music shop. The very next morning he had called Toby and asked him a favour. The old singer of the small grunge band which Dwalin – or James as they had known him as – had befriended during his rowdy teenage years in Edinburgh, had been happy to hear from him and it had taken him less than five minutes of conversation for Toby to agree.

“Well, I'd say Jim wasn't lying.” Toby proclaimed after a fashion, setting back a bass guitar “You do know your way around instruments.”

“I've been playing something all my life.” Frerin said with a small smile “More or less.”

“That's good, mate. That's good.” Toby said bobbing his head in a nod “Well, I reckon you can come tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Frerin asked, bemused and Toby grinned, exposing his yellowed teeth.

“You got yourself a job.” he said, popping a chewing gum in his mouth.

  
  


The door chimed shut behind him and Frerin pivoted on the spot, locking his eyes with Dwalin's, a mixture of confusion and joy inside them, while he opened and closed his mouth as if he was looking for the right words. Dwalin felt a chuckle rumble deep in his chest and he curved the corners of his lips.

“You said you wanted a job.” he said, shrugging lightly “So I asked Toby.”

“I... I don't know what to say.” Frerin said quietly and Dwalin let his chuckle run free, putting his arm over Frerin's bony shoulders.

“Come on, let's go grab a drink.” he told him, steering him to the left. “We ought to celebrate.”

  
  


The bar was relatively quiet that early in the evening and the dimmed lights forced Dwalin's eyes to adjust as he stepped off the sunny pavement and into the establishment where he and MacKenzie used to come often. At least, _had_ used to – ever since Frerin had appeared on his doorstep, Dwalin had gone out with his colleague only once, and the memory of _that_ particular night still burned his guts from within with guilt. He banished the thought, looking at the blond head of his former prince who was assessing their whereabouts. Dwalin began walking towards a table and Frerin followed, sitting down next to him, and smiling cautiously.

“Is this a date?” Frerin asked, after a while, sipping his beer.

“If you want it to be.” Dwalin replied, feeling the beginning of a flush travel up his neck.

“Why not? I'd like that.” the blond said, a smile dancing on his lips and in his clear blue eyes, then he looked at Dwalin with an earnest expression. “Dwalin, thank you for the, well, the job. And everything, really. You didn't have to”

Dwalin was about to tell him he had hardly done much when a shrill voice caught his attention.

“Murray!” a woman's voice exclaimed in a thick Scottish accent and Frerin whipped his head towards the source, his eyes meeting a plump woman with a halo of wiry red hair around her head “Fancy seeing yer ugly face here.”

“MacKenzie.” Dwalin greeted her with a grin, but Frerin picked the note of hesitation in his voice and frowned. “Can't say I missed you”

“Likewise.” the woman said with a bout of laughter, then leaning her hand on the back of Dwalin's seat she eyed Frerin contemplatively, cocking an eyebrow “So, Murray, care to introduce us?”

She had an open face, with laughter dancing in her small eyes and a lopsided grin that had something impish about it. She seemed vaguely familiar to Frerin, but he couldn't quite place her.

“Charles this is MacKenzie.” Dwalin said and Frerin managed not to flinch at the name.

“Mary.” she said, extending her hand and Frerin shook her.

“It's a pleasure to meet you.” he told her politely, his upbringing kicking in with Frerin barely noticing.

“Nah, the pleasure s'all mine.” she said “I reckon yer the one who turned Murray here into a homebody.”

Dwalin shot her a dirty look, but Frerin chuckled, liking the woman. She had a cheekiness that put him at ease and her face was open, emotions flickering freely.

“You have a familiar face, though.” she observed absent-mindedly and Frerin wouldn't have thought much of it had Dwalin not tensed by his side – a motion which had not been lost on the woman

“Murray, _why_ is he familiar?” she asked with an edge of steel in her voice “ _James?_ ”

It must have been the use of his given name, because Dwalin heaved a sigh, motioning with his head for her to sit down. Mary pulled out a chair, sitting down with a frown, while Frerin observed the dynamics with bemusement. What was going on?

“We arrested him a couple of months ago.” Dwalin deadpanned and Frerin's eyes widened as sudden realisation hit him.

Mary was his colleague.

“We arrested him.” she parroted, blinking while her face turned into something unreadable and all warmth vanished from her expression.

Her eyes flicked from Dwalin to Frerin, to their joined hands, then back to their faces, searching for something, what, Frerin had no idea, but he didn't like it. It was one of the things which had bothered him, but Frerin had chosen to push back under the threadbare rug of his consciousness. He knew what he was, what he had been and the words he had said to Dwalin that evening when the other man had told him he could stay at his place rang true ever louder. He could have trouble because of him, couldn't he? He was a petty offender in the eye of the law, but an offender still. And Dwalin was the law.

Frerin felt a bead of sweat travel down the back of his neck, trying to smother the shouts inside his head. It was frightening how normal everything had seemed only moments before, how pleasantly simple. They had been sitting in a bar and Mary had been grinning at them, happy for Dwalin's sake. But now her expression was closed off.

And Frerin suddenly remembered her. She was the one who had led him out of the cell when they had let him go. Her hair had been pulled back into a ponytail and Frerin had been much too in need of a fix to care much for the faces of the cops who had arrested him. He remembered her and as her eyes searched his face he could see the recognition dawn.

“James, for crying out loud.” she hissed, and Frerin swallowed

Everything had been good, too good lately, but he had known. He had known. A part of him had just waited for the thunder to strike, setting all aflame and bursting the frail illusion of happiness he had built within his damaged mind, bursting everything into a spider web of cracks before millions upon millions of sharp smithereens would fly like bullets through the timeless space of his mind, ripping him apart, shredding the newborn fibres which were holding him together. And he would fall, down down down where only the silver sheen of a promise could find him, catapulting him in the orbit of a rush and he would forget for a tiny while he even existed, he had ever existed and memories would be nothing but wisps of stale air. For a brief moment, while the droplet of blood would dry on the soft inside of his elbow, a small offering to the gods of oblivion, fickle and cruel. Taunting.

He swallowed dryly, reaching for his beer and pressing his fingertips against the rapidly warming wet glass of the bottle while his eyes dropped down. He had known. He had known. Nothing could last. And Dwalin, Dwalin would realise it too. He would. He loved his job.

Dwalin replied something to his colleague, but Frerin's ears were muffled by his choking thoughts and he eyed the surface of the table thinking about pale blue eyes and soft lips under the roughness of a beard which scratched his skin raw, thinking how Dwalin had made him feel alive, engulfed in the most overwhelming warmth which had make his heart drum in rhythm with his erratic breaths and there had been nothing, _nothing_ inside his head, nothing but the sweetest oblivion and a small death which had tasted sweeter than anything he had ever laid on his tongue. He thought about the roughness of that voice as it had whispered softly and he had been undone, erased from the spilled ink of his existence, from the rough grotesque sketch which was his mind - filled with dissonant voices that were there without being there, phantoms, memories in their own right, but so thick, so clogging. He thought about the warmth of that body curled behind his own, a strong arm holding him against his chest, the map of his memories, inked black on his skin and pressed against his back, almost willing to seep through him and destroy what lingered inside his mind, hack it down piece to piece. He thought about Dwalin and the way he would smile, feeding that hearth within his chest which burned in spite of all the frost that crept over the stones of his soul - the dampness of a graveyard which lingered inside him, because he would always be a dead man walking, dancing on the brink of unbeing while he cravenly begged for a gust of wind to push him down plummeting onto the sharp jagged rocks. And break.

He heard their voices, but the words did not register, because Frerin was nothing but memories, crammed inside a halfway broken body. And how long would the memories of Dwalin sustain him? How long would it take him before the need to forget would conquer the need to _remember_. He thought of Dwalin's blue eyes and how they would fill with incommensurable sadness, how they would crack clean through and Frerin hated that thought.

“Think about your career!” Mary snarled in a half whisper and Frerin looked up, watching Dwalin's tense shoulders and his determined gaze as it sparred with Mary's stubborn one.

He heard Dwalin reply something but Frerin was trapped once again inside his mind, in the dull buzz of his ears while he watched everything hang on the thinnest of ropes. Dwalin loved his job. If he had to choose...

Frerin knew what _he_ would chose were it his choice to make.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title taken from “How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us” by R.E.M..


	8. Of the things unsaid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here be angst aplenty. And happy things too. But angst.

As the minutes trickled by the bar slowly grew more populated, the chatter of the guests mixing with the music which played in the background. The fast beat of the pop song was not loud enough to disrupt their conversation, but discernible enough for the sugary voice of the singer to grate on Dwalin's already taut nerves and he gulped down a generous amount of beer with a scowl. A waiter approached but MacKenzie waved him off, eyeing Dwalin with stern disapproval etched on every inch of her freckled face.

Her tirade had come to an end and her lips were pursed, no doubt biting back another scathing remark and he felt his nostrils flare in irritation. He knew the reasons for her reaction and had the situation been reversed Dwalin had no doubt he would have told her the very same things, probably grabbing her shoulders and shaking her for good measure. He would have told her that she might be putting her career in jeopardy and asked her if she was sure there would be no relapse? No buying or selling drugs under her nose? And if there was, what would she do? Would she be able to do what would need to be done or would she compromise herself? He would have said so, just like she had.

And it was sensible, all of it, Dwalin knew. But it did nothing to quell the anger which simmered within him at MacKenzie's objections, at her not so veiled suggestion that Dwalin might be better off without Frerin. There was _nothing,_ nothing in the world that would have made him relinquish Frerin - nothing save Frerin himself. He had waited a whole lifetime – a long and lonesome lifetime, filled with grief beyond measure and little more than the stubborn will to keep pushing forward and do his duty - even if he hadn't known it had been Frerin he had been seeking all this time. But now that he had found him... No. The answer was no.

Determination was like the unbending steel of dwarven armour shielding his choices and straightening his spine, but MacKenzie had been insistent – her stubbornness could easily rival his own – and even in her silence she was berating him. Dwalin struggled to keep his temper in check and not snap at her. How could he blame her? She didn't know a single fraction of it. But at the same time Dwalin couldn't help the instinct which made him square his jaw and tighten his grip on Frerin's hand.

Frerin lifted his head, looking at him with an unreadable expression in his blue eyes which Dwalin didn't like - it resembled defeat too much. Something tugged inside his ribcage and the more he looked at him the more he wanted nothing but to leave the loud bar and the even louder Mary MacKenzie, and be at home with Frerin, feeling his shoulder-blades under his palms while he kissed every inch of him - until a smile would break on his face and he would tangle his fingers in his messy blond hair listening to his sighs, to his breaths as they calmly ghosted against Dwalin's neck while he murmured all the words Frerin needed to hear, the words that were able to banish Frerin's most maudlin moods and unclench his joints when he would wake drenched in sweat from one a nightmare.

He wanted, he _needed_ to push away that look, that tinge of resignation in the downward curve of his lips and restore the simple joy which had danced in his blue blue eyes when they had exited the music shop, less than an hour before. He needed.

“I'm not having this discussion.” he suddenly declared, eyeing MacKenzie with a stony expression that had her gaze harden and her left eye twitch in the tic that betrayed her irritation but she said nothing in reply “I'll see you at the station, MacKenzie.”

She nodded with a grimace and he rose from his seat, followed by Frerin's bewildered look. His lips were slightly parted - confusion or an unuttered word, Dwalin didn't know - but he followed his cue.

It took them a few minutes to make their way through the throng of people.

“Dwalin...” Frerin began with uncertainty in his voice once they had stepped outside. The rain had finally begun pouring and the air was heavy with a warm and sticky dampness.

“Let's go home.” he said simply and Frerin frowned but nodded.

 

They were dripping water on the hallway floor and Frerin observed as Dwalin ordered a very excited Barkith to be still while he opened the bathroom door, emerging a moment later with a towel he threw in his direction. He caught it deftly, proceeding to dry his drenched hair before he wiped away the rain from his face, all the while trying not to ogle the other man who had just peeled off his soaked T-shirt and trousers, and was purposefully striding towards the bedroom to retrieve some dry clothes.

He knew he should be extricating himself from his wet clothes, but his eyes were drawn to the muscles on Dwalin's back, rippling under the inked skin, and he swallowed, reminding himself that the warm coil within him was much misplaced. Dwalin's colleague had spoken the words Frerin had dreaded in the most secluded part of his mind and now everything hung on the brink of a precipice making the sight he was currently admiring, while his fingers clutched a towel in the middle of a hallway - the angles and dark lines of ink on the other man's skin that disappeared from sight when Dwalin opened the wardrobe doors – making that sight something Frerin could be very well denied very soon. The same way he would be denied the breath-hitching sensation of tracing the countless tattoos on Dwalin's back and chest with his fingers - like he had done just the night before while the sound of Dwalin's erratic breaths had filled his mind to the brink and drowned everything else.

“You'll catch your death.” Dwalin's rumbling voice reverberated from the bedroom as he emerged from behind the wardrobe doors, closing them dry clothes now covering his body.

He shivered in response to Dwalin's concern. He had a point, but in spite of the sticky chill of the damp clothes Frerin couldn't bring himself to care, not when... if... He inhaled a shuddering breath that had nothing to do with the cold wet fabric that stuck to his body like a skin waiting to be peeled off. If Dwalin was going to choose what Frerin feared he would, it would hardly matter because he - no longer Frerin or maybe forever so - he would be out in the rain before the day was done. Out and trying not to think of those blissful weeks, of having had Dwalin close, close, so close to him it had become nearly impossible to discern where one had ended and the other had begun. He would try not to think of him, of how it had been, of how precious those moments had been. He would, while he did what he had to do to secure himself some cash – or if was lucky a fix.

He swallowed down the disgust. He had always _loathed_ it, that part. But then there had never really been any other way for him and Charlie had lost what little dignity he had possessed when the back-door of his home had closed with a silent yet ominous click behind him and he had stood in the grey light of dawn completely lost.

He loathed it, he loathed _himself,_ but he had always refused to steal, and that had reduced his options to a select few. So Charlie, Frerin, _nobody_ , had always done what had needed to be done. It was still better than taking something that belonged to someone else. He had been able to live with the bone-deep disgust he had felt for himself afterwards – it had always been short lived, tipping over the horizon when the rush would hit. But stealing? He knew he could not bear the self-hatred that would come from the knowledge he had purposefully harmed someone, deprived them of something they needed, something they cared about only to silence his thoughts. It would be an act of selfishness he could not forgive himself.

He tasted bile in his mouth and felt weaker than he had ever felt, bared open with the scavenging thoughts picking at him with their sharp beaks. He had grown numb over the years, he had stopped caring, he had stopped _being_. But now his heart pumped with a purpose, and he couldn't, he couldn't let it go. He couldn't rip himself from home again. Home. Yes, Dwalin was home, Dwalin was where he belonged. But Dwalin deserved to be happy, Dwalin had every right to it. He was whole.

And Frerin, he had been broken and now the pieces no longer fit together – they never would, too much dirt had stuck to the edges, ruining them.

“Frerin?” He heard Dwalin's voice before his brain was able to comprehend what he was saying, but his voice was softer and Frerin's eyes focused on him, standing in the doorway, while the turmoil he felt inside rose up his gullet with the acrid taste of all the voices which sung like a choir inside his head – voices that cried in anguish out because he didn't want to lose this, he didn't, he didn't....

He didn't want to leave that hallway, to go out into the streets of London and, and... He wanted to stay there, he wanted Dwalin to grab his shoulder and kiss him, like he had done for the past weeks, until Frerin would disappear, forever losing himself to the beat of his own frantic heart and the matching beat of Dwalin's. But the latter was eyeing him cautiously, a crease between his brown brows while one of his hands was taking hold of the towel. Frerin released it from his white-knuckled grip, barely noticing Dwalin drop it on the floor.

“Frerin?” he inquired again, barely a whisper and there was worry in the deep rumble of his voice while he stood there, close, a hand hovering by his forearm but not grasping it, hesitant almost.

“Please.” he said, his voice breaking on the second syllable just like he was breaking inside, the thin film of, of... _hope_ which had wrapped itself over his shattered mind tearing apart and Dwalin pulled him into his arms while Frerin repeated the same word, over and over and over and he was not sure what he was asking for, what he was _pleading_ for, just that he couldn't let it all fall apart. He couldn't. No. _Please._

Dwalin shushed him softly, guiding him through the bedroom door and towards the bed. His calves hit the edge of the mattress and he sat down while Dwalin's hands released him and the erstwhile dwarf moved towards the wardrobe, taking out a change of clothes for him.

“Take those off.” he said, putting a pile of folded clothes on the bed and gazing at Frerin with worry.

He didn't move to do so, every muscle in his body beyond the control of his conscious mind and he heard Dwalin sigh, furrowing his brow while Frerin's eyes dropped and he stared down at his hands, folded in his lap. There were callouses on his fingers and scratches where Barkith's enthusiasm had made her teeth get too close to his skin. The small red patch where he had burned himself frying some eggs three days before and no dirt under his short-cropped nails. He closed his eyes, trying to get a semblance of control over himself, if nothing for Dwalin's sake who was hovering above him, concerned.

“What are you going to do?” Frerin managed at last in a barely audible voice that belonged to someone else - all his body belonged to someone else - speaking on auto-pilot while his mind was a screaming absence.

He saw Dwalin eyeing him in confusion and he added

“About what your colleague said.”

“MacKenzie can say whatever she wants.” Dwalin rebutted with an edge of steel in his voice, exhaling loudly “I don't care what she says. Or anyone for that part.”

Frerin blinked his eyes open.

“You... you don't?” he asked, his breath clogged somewhere in his windpipe and lifting his head just as Dwalin lowered himself down to his knees to stand at eye level.

“No.” Dwalin told him firmly “I don't care.”

He cupped Frerin's cheek with his palm, feeling the sharpness of his cheekbone and the light scraping of his blond beard. Watching the nearly heartbreaking way Frerin's eyes lit up. His eyes were naked, filled with an impossible array of emotions that made something tug painfully inside his chest. What must he had thought? Surely he hadn't...

“I would never leave you.” he exclaimed, boring his eyes into his “As long as you want me.”

Then softer,

“I promise.”

And Frerin leaned his forehead against Dwalin's, heaving a shaking breath and curling his fingers on Dwalin's shoulders with a desperation that he felt in the digging of his fingertips in the fabric of his shirt. He kissed him because he didn't know what to say, _how_ to say it better than he had and he needed to make _sure_ Frerin knew. He could never doubt. The world could end and the last boulders of the universe could crumble into dust but Dwalin would always find his way to him.

Always.

 

It was later, much later. The bedroom was dark but for the orange light filtering though the windowpanes, the rain's incessant pitter-patter mingling with the combined sound of their breathing as they lay, tangled one with the other above the sheets. Frerin's head was nested against his chest, the soft whispers of his breaths cool against the damp skin of his stomach. He toyed idly with Frerin's hair, running his finger through it while his other hand made it's way up and down the slowly receding ridges of his ribs.

He had been so thin - he still was - but there was more than just skin stretching over his bones lately and it filled Dwalin with hope. And he clung to it, standing his ground against the fears that lingered in the fringes of his thoughts. Frerin was getting better – _would_ be better. He believe it. He truly did.

If only Frerin was able to believe it himself.

_Whatever_ had happened when they had returned home that evening, Dwalin had no doubt it came back to that. To thinking that there was truth to MacKenzie's word - to thinking that a relapse was inevitable. But Dwalin had faith. And if faith failed him he had the stubbornness of a Dwarf.

He leaned his head forward pressing a kiss atop Frerin's head and he stirred, moving his body so his head fell on the pillow next to Dwalin's while his fingers rested where the heat of Frerin's head still lingered on the sweaty skin of his chest.

“I love you.” he murmured, looking at the shadows cast upon Frerin's visage and the orange light making the edges of his cheekbones sharper before it drowned in his short beard.

His eyes were open but there was an earnestness in them that filtered through the darkness of the room. He exhaled slowly, lifting his body so it was propped against his elbow and looking at Dwalin from above, the firm line of his lips and the smoothness of his brow now full in display.

“Dwalin” he began trailing off for a moment but he did not dare interrupting. There was something important, something Frerin _needed_ to say. It was almost tangible.

“I am... I am not the dwarf I used to be.” Frerin said “I am not. I have done things I... things I hate myself for. And... And when I look at myself in the mirror, most of the time I see a stranger. But you know what? I'm actually glad, because that _person,_ there in the mirror, I loathe it. It's nothing. It's horrible.”

“Frerin...” he interjected but the hand on his chest pressed lightly and he bit back his retort.

How could he think that of himself? He was as far from horrible as Dwalin was capable of conceiving. And loathsome... No. There was nothing Frerin could have done, _nothing_ that could ever make him think him such. And Dwalin had been on the force long enough to know what kind of life he must have lived before he had stumbled upon him - he did not delude himself. But it changed nothing for him. He loved Frerin, he loved his smiles, his dreamy gaze when he would lose himself in the music, the way he beamed when Barkith snuggled, licking his hand while he petted her with the other. He loved the sound of his voice and the selflessness that had never been vanquished from him in spite of it all. He loved him because he loved so much the world around him, the people around him, to the point of having no love left for himself. But it didn't matter. Dwalin loved him enough for both. And he would be his shield and his axes, his rock and hearth. Everything, anything Frerin needed him to be.

Frerin sighed opening his mouth to speak again and there was a stricken look in his eyes

“I'm not good for you.” he said and his voice was barely a whisper “I am... I'm broken, Dwalin. You deserve someone whole.”

Then lowering his eyes he added

“Someone who will make you happy.”

“You make me happy.” he retorted with perhaps too much strength, lifting himself until he was sitting with his back against the headboard “I don't want anyone else. I never will, do you understand this? And I don't care for anything you have done. I don't.”

He shook his head in emphasis, cupping Frerin's with his hands

“I don't care.” he repeated, then softer “I love you. You, Frerin, no one else. Never”

He saw his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed before he exhaled a deep breath. The moment stretched until his voice broke the silence.

“I love you too.” he said quietly before leaning forward and capturing Dwalin's lips in a kiss that was as gentle as it was firm. “I love you too.”

A kiss that was a promise.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter concludes this fic, but their story does continue in [Lonely souls](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3863302/chapters/8631286), so I promise you more Frerin/Dwalin, if minor. 
> 
> I hope this fic has been as enjoyable for you to read as it has been for me to write. There are many more tens (hundreds? o.O ) of thousands of words for as all to cross before this series is done and I hope you'll be around for the rest of the ride. :)
> 
> Chapter title taken from “Clocks” by Coldplay.


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